Tales of Older Days
by Clodius Pulcher
Summary: Dwarves, Elves and dragon cubs, oh my!  It's 2430 T.A. and a hapless urchin is fleeing through the midnight streets of Bree...  Starring Erestor, Tom B. et al, Dark Lords, Mariners, the Valar and others.  MEFA 2011 Second Place in Adventure: General.
1. It was a dark and stormy night

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS  
**

_**~ it was a dark and stormy night ~**_

**~o~O~o~**_**  
**_

_I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I do not own Middle-earth. _

_This story is dedicated to altogether too many people. They know who they are._

**~o~O~o~**

There are those who say that a story shouldn't start with the weather. Still, the heavens were as black as the back end of a goblin's kitchen and the wind howled through the ragged clouds after the frightened Moon; so down below in the town of Bree, where one small figure scampered breathlessly between puddles in the hammering rain, it was perfectly plain that it was a dark and stormy night.

Take a moment to consider Bree. The town has seen better days.

Fourteen hundred years earlier, for example, a visitor might have found the town in its heyday: snugly situated at the crossing of two great roads and three great kingdoms, the single uncontested and perfectly neutral spot between Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur. Embassies, merchants and adventurers had swollen the town to bursting point; Elves heading west had been a common sight; so too had been the Dwarven parties that still journey on the Great East Road, if less frequently since the rise of a fiery terror in Khazad-dûm. In those days was built the Inn of Bree; it stands here still, along with the high walls and strong gates of more prosperous years. Since then, the kingdoms have been lost and the roads have fallen into disrepair and disuse. Bree is no longer a rich and busy town.

The streets were almost empty. Here and there gleamed lantern-light behind drawn curtains, but midnight was no more than a memory and anyway the rain splashing over the red-tiled rooftops had kept most of the town's usual night-birds at home.

_Most_. An ominous echo caused the small figure to skid rather hastily round a corner, ducking into a mud-slick alley that would have been dank at the best of times. Voices blurred in the distance. Maybe they wouldn't notice the entrance – but no, there were footsteps at the other end of the alley –

– _they were getting closer_ –

Panicking, the urchin shot out the other end of the alley and slammed into someone who really shouldn't have been there.

The collision drove the breath out of both of them. "Elbereth!" came a startled exhalation at least two feet above the urchin's head; the urchin was grabbed by the collar, despite an attempt to wriggle desperately away. Flailing did not produce the desired effect. "Lemme go! Lemme go!" the urchin protested, painfully aware of the pursuers in the alley. "I gotta –"

Gruff shouts rang through the street. "There he is! Hey, you there –"

The urchin flailed harder. "Lemme _go_!"

Darkness and the storm conspired to shroud the street. Even an Elf's eyes would have been hard pushed to make out more than shadows moving through the pouring rain; the urchin, panting and blinded by fear, was overwhelmingly aware of the short, ominous figures emerging from the alley and the firm hand preventing any escape. "Well, this looks promising," murmured someone nearby, in the silky vowels and consonants of someone who had been brought up to speak Westron in the Elvish way. "We haven't seen Dwarves fighting each other for a very long time."

"I'm not sure this one is a Dwarf, actually," a similarly accented voice replied above the urchin's head. By pitch alone, it might have been a man or a woman speaking. "It's rather light."

There were four Dwarves; they had come out of the alley and stood threateningly in the street. One marched forwards, axe in hand. "You there," he said gruffly. "That boy's got something of ours. We want it back. Give him up, _now_."

He reached for the urchin with a mailed fist. The urchin squeaked and shrank back into the folds of the stranger's suddenly welcoming cloak. "Here now," said the stranger, mildly enough, "why don't we talk about this –"

Even in the dark, the edge of the Dwarf's axe glinted. The sound of the stranger's sword leaving its sheath was startlingly loud.

Events balanced on a blade's edge. No one moved.

"This is ridiculous," complained the silky voice of the stranger's companion. "A fight in the middle of Bree? We've only just arrived. What _has _this child stolen from you?"

"Nuffink!"

The Dwarf was slower to reply than the urchin. "A thing of value."

"_String_ is valuable to a Dwarf," said the urchin's captor. Rain trickled down the steady length of his sword. "What are you going to do to the boy?"

"What we do to all thieves!" the Dwarf growled. "Give him up!"

"No," said the urchin's captor and added a few words in a strange, harsh language that struck the urchin's ears like rocks shaken together in a sack.

This seemed to catch the Dwarves by surprise. After a minute or two, the chief dwarf replied in the same rough language, rather falteringly, which caused the second stranger to snort and remark in sarcastic Westron, "They've forgotten their own tongue so soon! It's only been what, four centuries since Hadhodrond burned?"

"Four and a half!" said the Dwarf angrily. "That's Khazad-dûm!"

The second stranger snorted again and said something sharp in that other language, of which the only word that the urchin could make out was _Moria_. "Unless," he added mockingly, "you prefer to use the Mannish tongue?"

The Dwarf's response was not in Westron; the urchin, currently trying to achieve invisibility through sheer willpower, thought he sounded rather huffy. More rocky words were exchanged. At last the Dwarf lowered his axe and stepped back, apparently conceding the argument.

"Run while you can, boy," he told the urchin. "You can't hide."

After which, to the urchin's considerable surprise, he left.

The gale had lessened to a light shower and a hint of moonlight was beginning to creep cautiously out of its cloudy shelter. Rainwater swirled in the street. "Well now," said the second silky-voiced stranger, as the splash of iron-soled Dwarven boots faded into the murky distance, "_that's_ over, for the moment, so what have we got here? Who are you, child, and what did you steal?"

"Nuffink!"

"Hmm," said the urchin's captor, shaking the dripping, muddy urchin out of the surprisingly dry folds of his cloak. Darkness and the depths of his hood hid his face; he was very tall, especially for a traveller in the Breelands, and he wiped the rain from his sword before returning it to its sheath. "I wonder –"

His equally tall companion, prowling past him, clamped a hand on the twitchy urchin's shoulder. "It's whatever the child's got under his coat, of course. He's far too bloated." Cold fingers pressed under the urchin's chin, startling the urchin out of a surreptitious examination of the surroundings. The stranger's voice was light and perfectly dispassionate. "You won't get anywhere by running away, you know. Where do you live?"

"Think he'll tell the truth?" said the first stranger. "Let's take him on with us to _The Prancing Pony_ and see what old Bob has to say."

The urchin was aware of no one at _The Prancing Pony _called Bob, but felt under no obligation to mention this. More urgent considerations presented themselves. "Not _The Pony_! Not there!"

"Why ever not?"

The urchin gulped, raised on tiptoes by the pressure of the cold fingers. "That's where they're staying!"

"Oh," said the second stranger. The cold fingers removed themselves from the urchin's chin, for which the urchin was grateful, having rather missed the ability to breathe. "Very well. There used to be an inn over by the South-gate –"

"There ain't now," gasped the urchin. "Look, 's nice o' you –"

"Wasn't it just?" said the first stranger, with affable menace. "If we can't go to _The Pony_ and _The Two-Faced Vintner_ isn't there any more, maybe you can recommend somewhere else. And then we can sit down in the dry and talk about who you are and why you're stupid enough to steal from Dwarves."

The urchin stole a glance into the comfortingly shadowy alley. "Yeah. Sure."

Bree might have seen better days, but it would take another six hundred years of slow decline for the town to dwindle into the village of T.A. 3018. A number of alehouses still throve in the surrounding streets, mostly patronised by less discerning drinkers; it was to one of these alehouses that the urchin led the silky-voiced strangers – reluctantly. Had an escape route presented itself, it would have been swiftly taken. Unfortunately, not least because the second stranger maintained a firm grasp on the urchin's ragged collar all the way, none did.

The alehouse was run by a tall, skinny woman called Kat Ferny. Her hair was brown and her skirt was red and she knew the urchin far too well, since she was the urchin's aunt. Not that she displayed any of the concern that might have been expected of an aunt when the urchin crept into the quiet common-room well past midnight. In fact, she erupted from the kitchen with a rolling pin wielded ominously in her hands, and if it hadn't been for the urchin's rescuers standing critically amid the empty benches, wraithlike in their grey cloaks, the urchin might well have regretted escaping the Dwarves.

"They-wanna-place-to-stay-an-I-brought-em-here!" said the urchin in one breath and glanced nervously up at the strangers. "Uh..."

"That's right," said the first of the silky-voiced strangers, slinging his battered leather bag down onto the dusty floor. His hands were white against the shadowy cloth of his cloak; free of his hood, the smooth lines and translucent fairness of his face shone youthful in the smoky room. A thick coil of black hair lay braided over his shoulder and his dark eyes glittered with amusement.

Kat Ferny gaped. So did the urchin. Elves were a rare sight in Bree these days.

The Elf raised his eyebrows. "Are we too late for supper?"

They were, of course. Miss Ferny retreated to the kitchen anyway, apparently stunned into acquiescence by so startling an apparition. This left the urchin alone in the common-room with the two Elves, a somewhat disconcerting circumstance, especially given that the second Elf was standing in the way of the door.

The first Elf glanced critically around the common-room. "Well, this could be worse," he said and arranged himself with careless elegance on a bench by the remnants of the fire. He grinned at his companion. "Better than a night in a wight's barrow."

"Most things are," retorted his companion, whose own uncloaking had revealed a very similar dark-haired Elf of youthful appearance, garbed without ostentation in a greenish tunic and leggings. He crossed the dusty floor in two leonine paces. His eyes were piercingly keen. "Now then. What's your name and what are you doing stealing from Dwarves?"

The urchin quailed. "Never stole nuffink –"

"Don't be silly, boy. You're hiding something under your coat. What is it?"

"Never –" started the urchin again, unwisely, and saw the Elf's expression. "'m not a boy," she said sulkily instead, resorting to evasion. "_Sir_."

"There's a thing," said the Elf. "Nor am I. What's that got to do with it?"

"Uh..."

The urchin was frankly startled. It was true that the Elf was both willowy and startlingly beautiful, besides being in possession of a silkily ambiguous voice; but then, so was the Elf who sprawled amused on the bench by the fire. Elves were _supposed _to be golden-tongued and fair of face. Everyone knew that. For Elves, in fact, they seemed very nearly ordinary. The urchin had taken their weapons and clothing and willingness to get on the wrong side of four Dwarven war-axes to mean they were men.

The Elf-woman exhaled. "Well, what's your name? I'm getting tired of calling you 'child'."

"Gogollescent," muttered the urchin. "'s Gogol for short."

"Strange name," yawned the Elf by the fire. "Maybe you should take your coat off, Gogol. Must be wet through, the way you're dripping."

A static shadow was indeed soaking itself into the dust around Gogol's battered boots. She scowled at the Elf and knotted the sopping cuffs of her overlong sleeves together, clutching defensively at the bulge beneath her coat. "Weren't me what chose it. What's yours? Yez a woman too?"

The Elf who was a woman snorted; the one by the fire only grinned and said, "No. I'm Erestor and my wife's name is Melinna. We're passing through Bree on the way to see a couple of friends. That was the idea, anyway, before you ran into me so abruptly. And now we've been introduced, so why don't you sit down and tell us what you've stolen from the Dwarves? You owe us that much for saving your skin."

Gogol had never put much stock in the common law of tit-for-tat. "Yeah," she said, calculating her chances of making a break for the exit. How fast was the Elf-woman? Gogol was very good at dodging. It had to be odds-on in her favour at least. "Sure. I –"

The door slammed open in a rain-edged blast of wind and black air. On the threshold stood a pair of armoured Dwarves; behind them, a cloaked figure loomed out of the dark.

The Elves were visibly startled. Melinna swung round at once, reaching for her sword, in the same moment that Erestor ceased to lounge by the fire and rose in a single fluid movement, two long knives shining in his hands. Gogol was already scrambling for the shelter of a nearby table, one arm crooked protectively around her perilously acquired prize. The Elves had got themselves involved in this. They had _volunteered_. Let them handle it.

She squeezed herself into the darkest corner she could find and held her breath.

The Dwarves had taken up position on either side of the door. Now the cloaked figure came slowly into the common-room, long sleeves falling away from slim wrists as the hood came back. Gold spilled over the woman's shoulders in loose ringlets; the mass of her hair was caught back by a rope of black pearls knotted into something elegantly akin to a diadem. Squinting between chair-legs and the bottom of the table, the urchin could just make out a slice of perfect profile.

Her voice was low and melodious. "Mili," she said. "Are these the gentlemen who obstructed your attempt to regain my property this evening?"

A third Dwarf stumped in from the dark. Had the urchin been able to contort her skinny body into only a slightly closer approximation of a pretzel, she would probably have recognised the chief of her earlier pursuers. Beard bristling, he jerked the door shut and glared at the Elves. "Yes, ma'am. That they are."

"Naturally we did," came Melinna's cool voice. "He waved an axe at us."

"I am sure he is nothing if not zealous in the prosecution of his duties," said Ma'am, her voice dropping a notch in a way that might have sounded seductive, had the threat been less obvious. "You will, of course, turn the thief and my property over to me at once."

Gogol, under the table, gulped. The Elves glanced at each other.

"No, I don't think we will," said Erestor. "Why would we do that?"

Ma'am seemed momentarily inclined to react badly to this. Then she produced a thin smile and a flick of her hand that caused one of her guards to dart forwards and pull out a chair. It was rough and splintery; she seated herself as though upon a sculpted throne. The fall of her cloak revealed her patterned skirts, elegant in black and silver.

"My name," she said, "is –" and she uttered a word involving far too many 'z's and peculiar inflections for the urchin, at least, to have ever remembered it "– but you may call me Inez. Lady Inez. I desire you to return to me my property, gentlemen. And also the thief. Elves are an honourable people. Surely you will not harbour a criminal?"

"Some Elves are," said Melinna. "Dead ones, mostly. What are you doing wandering around with a Númenórean name? The island's been under the sea for two and a half thousand years."

Lady Inez's eyes narrowed. "I am a lady who has been robbed and seeks proper requital."

"So you said. What if the child returns your property?"

"I will be indebted to you," replied Lady Inez, rather haughtily. "But I shall not be satisfied until the thief is also turned over to me."

Erestor appeared to be entranced by the play of firelight on his knives. "Pity," he murmured. "You won't be satisfied, then. What is it, by the way?"

The lady rose with startling suddenness, her shadow splashing ominously titanic over the smoky walls. "A thing of value," she said softly, arranging her arms under her cloak so that her looming silhouette gained an odd appearance of folded wings. "I want it back. I _will_ take it back, one way or another. And that boy cowering under the table will discover what happens to those who dare to steal from me."

None of the rather numerous threats made against Gogol in the past had caused her to feel quite so nervous about a victim's wrath. She cowered harder. The Elves, on the other hand, regarded Lady Inez critically; they might have been awarding marks out of ten. "Not bad," said Melinna, "for a mortal. I've heard better."

Erestor grinned. "Celegorm Fëanorion in full flow..."

"Now there was an honourable Elf." By the way her mouth twisted, the epithet was less than wholly complimentary. "And if we don't give up the child, Lady Inez?"

A nasty suspicion struck Gogol that the room's temperature had dropped by several degrees. Her limited viewpoint showed her only the shadows cast by the raised axes of the Dwarves. Judging by their feet, the Elves were lightly poised; it was impossible to tell whether they intended to fight or run.

"Why then," she heard Lady Inez say, "you shall share his fate. _Mili _–"

At which point, a vigorous bronze clamour started up on the other side of the shuttered window and Bree's night watchman could be heard informing the world that it was two in the morning. Moments later, a thunderous knocking at the door announced the watchman himself. Kat Ferny's alehouse had a reputation for brawling and rough behaviour unsuited to the polite streets of Bree; the watchman had seen light glimmering round the edges of the shutters and come to assure himself that all was well.

"'ere," he said, when he had quite got his breath back. It was obvious that he was at least as startled by the presence of Elves as by the weaponry on display in the room; where Dwarves went, metalwork of a martial sort was sure to appear before too long. "You shouldn't wave swords an' axes an' things around like that. A pers'n might get 'urt."

"So they might," said Erestor easily and sheathed his long knives. "Lady Inez was just going. Isn't that so, ma'am?"

Lady Inez's expression could have frozen a Balrog.

"Precisely," she purred. "We shall conclude our business at a later date."

The urchin was considerably startled for a second time that night when, without further ado, Lady Inez and the Dwarves departed.

So did the watchman. Since Kat Ferny was nowhere to be seen, this left only the Elves, whose patience appeared to have worn thin; at any rate, Erestor reached under the bench and hauled Gogol, wriggling and protesting, out of her refuge without paying any attention to her complaints. He set her down in front of the hearth and stood over her ominously, while the Elf-woman prowled around the common-room like a cat sniffing out a mouse.

"What have you stolen?" he demanded. "Stop batting your eyes. Just tell us!"

Gogol surveyed her options. This did not take long. She cringed and gave up.

"Uh... a dragon's egg."


	2. The patter of tiny feet

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

_**~ the patter of tiny feet ~**_

**~o~O~o~**_**  
**_

_Many thanks (again) to my beta-readers for their unscrupulous encouragement!_

**~o~O~o~**

Extracted from the urchin's tattered coat, the stolen object seemed at first no more than a bulky bundle of dirtyish woollen cloth. Unravelling the layers revealed a smooth and convex surface that was for the most part a polished bluish shade. In places the icy colour paled almost to translucency. A distinct suggestion of compressed limbs and coiled appendages could just be made out through the cloudy shell.

It was definitely an egg. And it was too big to belong to any bird.

"Although there was that one in Near Harad –" began Erestor, and broke off. "The shells were white, though."

"It's too heavy," said Melinna. "Those aren't feathers."

They contemplated the monstrous egg with shared misgivings. It lay gleaming in its nest of woollen wrappings, glossy by firelight. Occasionally it wobbled.

Melinna reached out and touched the shell. "It's cold. Maybe the thing's dead."

As if in response, the egg gave a little twitch. Movement was visible through one of the translucent patches, along with the metallic tip of something alarmingly talonlike. The worrying possibility occurred to both of them that the thing had scratched at the inside of the shell.

She snatched her hand away. "Maybe not."

Erestor shook his head. "I think the girl's right," he said. "It's a dragon's egg."

"Hey –" said the urchin, unable to keep quiet any longer. She bounced onto her toes, peering at the egg with eager curiosity. "'_Course _it is! Said so, didn't I? Is it gonna hatch? What's a baby dragon like, can I keep it? Can I? I stole it! Fair 'n' square!"

"No, you can't," said Erestor shortly. He drummed his fingers on the scarred and pitted wood of the table, ignoring the urchin's indignant wail of protest. "Baby dragons grow into adult dragons, which is the last thing Bree needs. What were you doing stealing it anyway? Who is this Lady Inez and what's she doing with a dragon's egg?"

"Ain't no reason I shouldn't –" muttered the urchin and caught Melinna's eye. She subsided sulkily. "Was up at _The Pony_ mucking out horses..."

The urchin, it transpired, garnered occasional employment as a stablehand at _The Prancing Pony_. It went unsaid (but generally understood) that opportunities for petty thieving were much improved in that part of town; there were additional reasons, but Gogol felt no particular need to elaborate on her currently prickly relationship with her aunt. A large party of Dwarves had arrived by the Greenway the previous afternoon, travelling from the North and giving every indication of being a heavily armoured war-party. Naturally this had caused Gogol to prick up her ears. Dwarves were well-known to be excessively fond of jewels; their pockets were often all the better for a little lightening; and what had such a warlike lot been doing up North amid the ruins of ancient cities anyway, if not prospecting for lost treasure? And then there was the cloaked and hooded woman who travelled with the Dwarves and seemed to be giving them orders...

At any rate, Gogol had restrained herself until well after nightfall, before creeping into the Inn to satisfy her curiosity. The Dwarves had been carousing merrily in the common-room; the woman was nowhere to be seen. Right before the great hearth, glowing cherry-red by firelight, sat a massive iron chest.

With a massive iron lock. The corresponding iron key must be in the possession of the mysterious woman.

Dwarves were good at carousing. It had been well past midnight by the time the last of them slipped contentedly under the table, leaving Gogol free to attempt the chest.

("You never picked a Dwarven lock," said Melinna at this point. "I wouldn't have thought it possible!"

The urchin scowled. "Did too!"

Both Elves regarded her in disbelief. The evidence rocked gently in front of them.)

The iron of the chest had been hot to the touch. Wrapping her hands in her tattered coat-sleeves to avoid scorching her fingers, the urchin had gingerly lifted the lid. She had been disappointed to find only layer after layer of carefully packed woollen cloth, rather than the expected treasure-trove.

And there, nestled snugly in the midst of all this material, the urchin had uncovered the monstrous egg.

Whereupon she had heard footsteps. Bundling the egg under her coat, she fled _The Pony_...

"... an' then I ran inna you two!" finished the urchin, beaming at them. The hollowness of her grimy face was accentuated by her hair, a dripping mess of slick black spikes. Her eyes were grey as a nightingale's breast-feathers and bright with enthusiasm. "Is it gonna hatch? Whatcha gonna do wiv it?"

"Good question," said Erestor. He glanced at the monstrous egg. "What _are _we going to do with it?"

Melinna shrugged. "Destroy it? It's a _dragon_."

The urchin squeaked and made a protective lunge. "You ain't gonna –!"

"Stop that," said Erestor, rolling his eyes, while Melinna pried the egg out of the urchin's grubby clutches. Ghostly paw-prints lingered as condensation on the glassy surface of the shell. "Dragons aren't like dogs, child. Morgoth Bauglir made them, the Valar only know how, and I never saw one dead on a battlefield yet. Worse than Balrogs. Túrin had a madman's luck. But – I say no. No one's ever seen a chick in the egg. We can't destroy it. Elrond would have a fit."

"And Mithrandir and Curunír and definitely Radagast," murmured Melinna, "and Círdan, and Celeborn and Galadriel, and Thranduil..."

"Exactly."

"Point taken. It can't hatch here, though. I say we head back to Imladris in the morning."

"All right. I –"

"Hey!" said the urchin, evidently alarmed. "You're going? What about me?"

The Elves looked at her. "What about you?" said Erestor.

"I stole it!" said the urchin furiously. "'s mine!"

Only Melinna's restraining hold prevented her from reclaiming the dragon's egg. "You know," said Melinna, while the urchin protested her captivity in no uncertain terms, "she has a point. We can hardly leave her here. The Dwarves will tear her apart."

"That will teach her an important lesson about stealing from Dwarves," said Erestor. Melinna's look was reproving; he grinned and relented. "What, you want to take her with us? What about her family –?"

Abruptly the urchin ceased to struggle. "I ain't got no family! Take me wiv you! Where's Imladris? Is it an Elf-city? I wanna come!"

She peered hopefully up at them. Erestor raised his eyebrows.

"This is absurd," he said to Melinna in Sindarin. "Take the child to Imladris? She'll steal the tapestries from the walls!"

Melinna shrugged. "Maybe we can teach her better manners."

"You can try!" He turned back to Westron and the urchin. "All right. You can come. But no thieving, understood? That means no rifling through our bags when we're not looking. Or our pockets!"

The urchin contrived to radiate the aura of an innocent unjustly accused. "'Course not! What's Imladris like? Is it full of Elves? Are you gonna hatch the dragon there?"

"O Elbereth!" sighed Erestor. "This is going to be a very long trip."

Attention now returned to the dragon's egg, innocuous in its heaped-up woollen nest. During the time they had been talking, the translucent patches on the shell had clouded to a uniform blue opacity and the side nearest to the fire was noticeably duller. Striking it lightly with a fingernail produced a sound like china set down on a stone surface. "It's the heat," said Melinna. "It's reacting to the heat. Was it like this when you found it, Gogol?"

The urchin, all smiles, bobbed gleeful assent. "They must have been trying to hatch the beast," said Erestor. He lifted the egg out of its nest, turning it carefully in his long fingers. His touch left no marks on the increasingly brittle shell. "Absurd. I wouldn't be up in the North right now for all of Eriador. There must be a very cross dragon-mother up there somewhere. Who'd be mad enough to steal a dragon's egg and then hatch a dragon out of it?"

Melinna shrugged. "Let's worry about that once we've got the egg off our hands. Gogol, what's the coldest place around here?"

After some thought, the urchin supposed that this might be the larder. "Why?" she added suspiciously.

"So that it doesn't hatch, of course."

The urchin seemed inclined to balk. "Won't the baby dragon die?"

"If we're lucky," said Erestor, setting the egg down again and beginning to rewrap its woollen layers. "Dragons are practically unkillable, I'd be surprised if a bit of cold hurt it much. So this larder –"

For the second time that evening, the door burst open. This time there was no need for the Elves to reach for their weapons; the intruder was only the alewife Kat Ferny, coming pink and wind-tousled from the blustery night. Her cloak was damp and thick with mud. She saw them sitting there and stopped dead, a curious expression fluttering across her thin face. "I – uh –"

Her gaze fell upon the urchin. "Gogol! Why ain't you gone yet?"

"She's with us," said Erestor, not without a touch of weariness. "Good alewife –"

"She ain't gonna stay here!" said Kat Ferny, arms akimbo. "Not in my house!"

Melinna's mouth quirked. "I see the lady knows you," she said to the urchin. "What did you do this time?"

"Nuffink!"

Kat Ferny threw up her hands. "As if I ain't done enough for the brat!" she exclaimed. "Brought her up like my own child, didn't I? If I had a child, which I _don't_, not being a fool like my poor sister, maysherestinpeace. Lavished her with love and attention, I did! And how does the brat repay me?"

The urchin appeared to have heard all this before; at any rate, she was rolling her eyes and mouthing along with the litany. The face she pulled during Kat Ferny's dramatic pause was quite grotesque.

Melinna took the cue obligingly. "How does she repay you?"

"She lies and she steals!" snapped Kat Ferny, which was incontestable. "My own dear sister's child! After all the trouble I took to bring her up properly! Sarry's heart would've broke from grief –"

"– _if she weren't dead already giving birth to a Ranger's brat_ –" muttered the urchin.

"– if she weren't dead already –" The alewife broke off, glaring at the urchin. She removed her sodden cloak and knelt to untie her bootlaces in a series of short, jerky movements that underscored the sharpness of her next words. "You ain't got no respect! That's your problem, missy, and that's why you ain't welcome here. That and your stealing. You steal from me and you steal from my customers! And I won't be having with it! So get out! Git!"

"All right!" said the urchin, aggrieved, and began to button up her oversized coat. Her tone suggested wounded pride. "Weren't here 'cause I _wanted_ to be. Wouldn't _wanna _be where I'm not _wanted_."

She slunk towards the door. Erestor sighed and reached out to catch her skinny wrist.

"Enough of this," he said to Kat Ferny. "She's staying."

The alewife swelled wrathfully. "Well, I never –"

Whatever else she might have said was cut off when Melinna unfolded herself from the bench by the fire. Possibly the alewife interpreted this as an implicit threat. Melinna's smile was as brilliant as an Elf who wanted something could make it; the coins she set down on the rough table held a distinctly golden gleam.

"There's hardly enough of the night left to argue," she pointed out. "And she'll be leaving with us in the morning. I take it no one will complain?"

"Complain?" said Kat Ferny, eyeing the coins. "Ha! Just don't bring her back!"

The urchin sulked. "Don't _wanna_ come back," she muttered, although Melinna's contribution to the debate appeared to be distracting her attention as well. Luckily for her aunt's pocket, Erestor was on hand to thwart her wandering fingers. She pushed her dripping shock of spiky black hair out of her face. "'m going to Imladris wiv the Elves! So there!"

Her smugness was unmistakably genuine. "Quite," said Erestor, evincing very little personal enthusiasm. "Now maybe we can find this larder. And wasn't there talk of supper at some point?"

This recollection of supper seemed to disconcert the alewife. She mumbled something and retreated hastily kitchenwards; her annoyance when they followed was tinted with alarm. There was bread and butter and a dish of cold meats on the table; the kitchen gave every indication of having been abandoned in the middle of Kat Ferny's preparations for an impromptu meal. Would this bulky bundle be safe in the larder overnight? Why yes, yes indeed – Kat Ferny was firm, indeed she might even have been relieved, on this point. Safe? Definitely! She brandished a set of heavy keys. Only the presence of her niece (a hard look was directed at the urchin at this point) prevented Kat Ferny's alehouse from being the safest place in Bree.

The alehouse had only one lodging-room. It was therefore fortunate for the Elves that it was currently unoccupied; they settled down for what remained of the night with some relief. The room was neither elegant nor warm nor particularly clean; but a mattress and a set of moth-eaten blankets was better than another night spent under a bush in the summer rain. In deference to her aunt's lack of familial feeling, Gogol was given a pillow and a corner of the lodging-room wherein to curl up in Melinna's cloak. Kat Ferny very much disliked the thought of the urchin being free to roam around her alehouse at night.

Sleep passed into the alehouse like a shadow, leaving no traces.

And fled two hours later, startled away by a scream.

The scream came from Kat Ferny. It split the stillness like a peacock's battle cry; the absence of noise that followed was profound and ominous. When the Elves appeared on the scene, followed by the urchin tumbling sleepily down the stairs still wrapped in Melinna's cloak, they discovered the alewife flat on her back on the kitchen floor, her heavy key-ring lying close by her outstretched hand. She seemed to have fainted. A lantern on the table filled the kitchen with yellow shadows. The larder door swung wide open and a trickle of white mist hung low in the chilly air.

Erestor and Melinna exchanged a glance; the latter put out a hand to prevent the urchin's immediate forwards rush. "Not a good sign," she murmured. The mist was thickening around the open larder door.

He exhaled. "No."

They both carried knives, which evidently caused the urchin some unease. "Is it the dragon?" she demanded, her voice shrill in the quiet dimness. She attempted to lean around Melinna. "Has it hatched? Are you gonna –?"

"_Hush_. And stay put."

Erestor padded into the kitchen on noiseless feet, the mist swirling around his ankles. Melinna came a step behind, dropping briefly to check on Kat Ferny while Erestor drifted towards the larder.

He peered inside.

The word he uttered had been considered decidedly indecorous when they were both young beneath the stars. Melinna rose at once. "Is that – has it –?"

She joined him at the open door. By now the mist was knee-high and brushed the skin like a wet blanket.

Inside the larder, the air was freezing. Ice skimmed the stone floor and glittered on the shelves. The wool of the egg's nest had frozen stiff and lay scattered in shreds and frosty rags across the back of the larder. Glassy shards of shell gleamed on the floor.

A pair of limpid blue eyes blinked up at them. Melinna stared back, dismayed.

The creature was the size of a cat clad in silver scales. It sat like a cat as well, poised neatly with its tail curled around its dainty paws, a crest of spines ruffling up along its long neck. There was little enough light in the larder even for Elven eyes, but they could both make out the softness of its glistening armour and the translucency of its wings, skin stretched thin over birdish bones fanning out to dry in the glacial air. Mist leaked in wisps and icy puffs from the creature's nostrils, trickling sluggish among the spectral shadows.

It was perhaps unfortunate that the first word the newly-hatched dragon heard from Melinna's lips was the one that had just been used by Erestor. "Oh _dear_," she added in Westron, for the urchin's benefit. "It's a cold-drake."

"What's a cold-drake?" said the urchin at once. Evidently assuming that there was no longer anything to be worried about, she bounced across the kitchen and squinted into the icy darkness, ignoring her still-unconscious aunt entirely. The shadow-grey cloak trailed behind her through the mist. "Ain't it a dragon after all? Don't dragons breathe fire?"

The dragonet in the larder tipped its head innocently to one side and did not set fire to anything. Melinna shuddered. "Wrong sort of dragon. And _don't_ do that –"

She spoke too slowly. Gogol had already slipped between them. Before Erestor, already leaning into the larder, could retrieve the urchin, she was petting the dragonet and commenting loudly on the coldness of its supple scales and pulling at its tail to see how far it stretched.

The dragonet yawned, displaying an array of exceedingly sharp little teeth, and twitched the tip of its captive tail. Then it gave a soft chirrup and blinked both sets of translucent eyelids.

Then it bit the urchin.

While Erestor dealt with the yelping urchin's new bracelet of scarlet tooth-marks, Melinna watched the dragonet with foreboding. It stretched cattishly, forepaws scraping on the icy stone and its back arching in a ruffle of spines. The naked blueness of its eyes shone as brightly as an Exile just arrived from Tree-lit Valinor.

It pattered out of the larder. Melinna was caught by surprise and might have used her knife, but the dragonet only coiled around her feet and chirruped again, hopefully. She took the hint. It was light in her hands, and cold, and it laid its silver head smugly on her shoulder, as though it thought it belonged there.

She sighed and scratched one feathery ear.

"You," she said in a dialect older than Sindarin or Quenya, while the dragon's purr spilled white mist in cold plumes down her neck, "are going to be a problem."


	3. Indulge your local narrator

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

**~ _indulge your local narrator_ ~**

**~o~O~o~  
**

_Again, I owe everything to my beta-readers. A special thank you to Redheredh for the linguistic assistance!_

**~o~O~o~**

Let's pull back and take a longer look at what happens next...

"– _don't even know if it's male or female –_"

It's almost dawn. Up in the lodging-room of Kat Ferny's alehouse, Miss Gogollescent Ferny sprawls out on a tatty rug and stares at a dragon. The little beast is curled up in Melinna's lap, head resting on its folded forepaws and the silvery tip of its tail twitching sleepily against her leg. Absently, the Elf strokes the dragonet's feathery ears. Occasional glimmers of blue beneath translucent eyelids suggest that it is still awake.

Above Gogol's head, the Elves are talking quietly in some silky Elvish language that Gogol does not understand. She doesn't care. Her wrist hurts quite a lot and she's lightheaded from sleeplessness, but she's looking at a dragon! And she's in a room with Elves! And she's leaving Bree and going to some Elf-city! With the Elves! And a dragon!

Her thought process is somewhat circular, admittedly, but that's what lack of sleep does to you.

"– _or what it eats _–"

One of the dragonet's eyes winks open, blue as sky-silk. Gogol catches her breath.

"– _keen on cheese, by the state of the larder _–"

Down in the kitchen, meanwhile, Kat Ferny is recovering her composure with a tankard of home-brewed ale. Most of the white mist has cleared, but the air is still icy and a dribble of water creeps dark over the floor from the thawing larder. She's trying not to think about what she saw sitting in there when she crept down earlier. One of the Elves assured her it was nothing to worry about and normally the coins that materialised in her hand would have convinced her that he was right.

She hasn't seen it since, anyway. It was gone when she came around, along with her errant niece and the other Elf. She doesn't think this was a coincidence.

"– _can't feed it cheese all the way to Imladris –_"

Kat Ferny empties her tankard and gets up determinedly. There's an empty basket by the door; she hooks it over her arm and goes out into the grey morning.

The latch snicks quietly shut behind her.

"– _never know where Radagast is when you need him _–"

Upstairs, the dragon kneads Melinna's knee in a cattish prickle of needle-sharp claws. Gogol is swimming too deep in the blue memory of a summer afternoon to notice the Elf wince. She's barely aware of the lodging-room starting to come apart into hazy fragments.

"– _is bound to know, and since we were heading that way –_"

A soft thump interrupts Erestor. Gogol has keeled over. Luckily she's close enough to the floor that this will have no unpleasant consequences. The Elves break off their conversation and exchange startled glances; in Melinna's lap, the dragonet blinks its innocent blue serpent-eyes, nestles its head against its paws and attempts to line up the syllables of the first word it ever heard in this shiny new world.

It's going to be a beautiful day.

**~o~O~o~**

Now let's take a look at a different part of Bree.

A certain sleepiness hangs over _The Prancing Pony_. The kitchen staff are just waking up and a stablehand yawns over his broom, but the guests are mostly still asleep and so is the landlord and his wife. The common-room is empty except for one person when Kat Ferny sidles inside, her hood pulled low over her thin face.

She slides onto the bench. The Dwarf nods a solemn greeting. "Got it?"

Kat Ferny gulps. "It's hatched!" she wails. "Right there in me larder!"

The Dwarf groans. His eyes are bright beneath his bushy brows.

"Uh..." says Kat Ferny tentatively. "Do I still get the money?"

There's something rather disconcerting about the way the Dwarf's beard bristles. He mutters something in the rocky Dwarvish tongue and adds portentously, "Old Dwarvish saying. Means, 'O the times! O the customs!'"

"Oh," says the alewife, confused and indefinably impressed. "So the money –"

"No, ma'am. You don't get the money."

**~o~O~o~**

And here's a very nice room on the Inn's upper storey, where a woman sits poised before a mirror, drawing a brush through her golden locks. She's not thinking about very much, except possibly about how convenient it is to be so strikingly blonde and startlingly beautiful. It really turns people's heads. Especially Dwarven heads; the race's peculiar demographics mean that most of their men are rarely exposed to feminine charms.

Very convenient. And anyway, she likes the colour. It reminds her of a certain once-upon-a-time when life had been all about jewels and jewellery and precious metals, binding gold into trinkets the precise shade of the curls falling through her fingers...

A tap at the door breaks into Lady Inez's reverie. In the mirror, Mili's beard appears through the doorway, somewhat in advance of Mili himself.

"Ma'am," he says respectfully. "It's about the Thing. There's a bit of a problem..."

**~o~O~o~**

"– _so that's sorted, then_ –"

Back in Kat Ferny's alehouse, the Elves are still talking in Elvish. Gogol has propped herself fuzzily against the wall and is trying to work out exactly what just happened. There was an endless chasm tumbling upwards into the lapis lazuli sky...

She's distracted by a flutter of silver: the dragonet has woken up. It chirrups. The sound might have been timed to hide the tell-tale noises of Kat Ferny slipping back into her kitchen from two pairs of keen Elven ears.

"It's probably hungry," says Melinna, dropping back into Westron. She tickles the dragonet under its chin. "Hmm?"

The dragonet nuzzles against her fingers. Then it successfully pronounces a word that makes both Elves wince, ruffling its spine-spikes with obvious pride. Gogol sits forwards eagerly, fascinated all over again.

"It can talk!" she exclaims. "_Añ–ño–lë. _What does that mean?"

"'Sugar'," says Melinna firmly. "That's what it means. And you're not to repeat it! No, not you, either!"

This last comment is addressed to the dragonet, which chirrups curiously and repeats itself anyway. Melinna blinks. "No!"

Down in the kitchen, Kat Ferny is putting the kettle on. Most of the ice in the larder has melted and the window's ablaze with yellow dawn. It could be any early morning for an alewife in the sleepy town of Bree.

And then Mili the Dwarf kicks down the door.

**~o~O~o~**

We may now confine our attention strictly to the lodging-room, where two Elves, one urchin and a very small dragon were suddenly very glad to be already awake.

The room was at the back of the ale-house and possessed a narrow window, through which (with a little effort) it should just have been possible for an Elf to slither. This hypothesis was immediately confirmed by Erestor, in motion even before Gogol had got to her feet. A two-storey drop stretched out between the window and the scrap of a garden that lay below; but the alehouse had been built by the Men of Bree, who were considerably shorter than Elves, and Erestor was light on his feet. He landed easily and without doing a great deal of damage to the flowerbed, although Kat Ferny was unlikely to appreciate his consideration, given the swath cut through the pansies when Melinna flung their bags down after him.

A thunder of iron-soled boots announced the Dwarves on the staircase. "You next," said Melinna briefly to Gogol, who found herself being dangled out of the window at arm's length without having caught her breath for long enough to protest. For one horrible moment, she was sure she would fall; and then, just as Melinna let go, Gogol found herself caught by Erestor and set down on the ground.

She gulped and stumbled off to one side, crushing a couple of marigolds. Here came Melinna lithely out of the window, dropping confidently into Erestor's hold. The chirruping dragonet was caught up safely in the crook of her arm.

Overhead, it sounded as though the Dwarves had stormed the lodging-room. "Time to move," said Erestor in swift, soft Sindarin. He released her, reaching for his bag. "You take the children, I'll distract them."

"All right." She switched into Westron. "Gogol! Come here! and give me back my cloak!"

Erestor vanished around the side of the alehouse. Gogol goggled, all her instincts offended, as Melinna drew up her hood and pressed back against the stone wall, enveloping the three of them in the folds of her shadow-grey cloak. The Elf's arm was clamped firmly around her, or she might have scurried after Erestor. An attempted 'meep' from the dragonet was swiftly stifled. "Don't make a sound!" hissed Melinna.

The next few minutes passed very slowly. It was probably just as well that Gogol, swallowed up in the Elven-cloak, was blind to the Dwarvish head leaning round the corner. Melinna held her breath and exhaled only when the head withdrew.

There. She counted to twenty. That should do it.

"Come on," she said briskly. "Gogol, what's the least obvious way out of town?"

Gogol's route through Bree was naturally circuitous and involved a number of rather unpleasant alleys. The mud lay treacherous underfoot and the streets glistened damply after the stormy night, although the sky was paling into a clear and rain-washed morning above the tiled roofs. Even as they ducked into the shadows of crooked walls and hurried through other people's empty gardens, they encountered startled looks from the odd passerby. The town was beginning to wake up.

It was assisted in this by the Dwarves and their iron-soled boots. The racket they made was clearly audible from all sides of Bree. This caused Gogol to look frequently uneasy, especially when angry shouts could be heard alarmingly close by, but they made it almost to the West-gate without ever crossing paths with the Dwarves. Somewhere at the other end of town, Erestor's long-legged fleetness must have been making him decidedly unpopular with his diminutive pursuers.

The gatekeeper was just opening the gate. Gogol tensed herself to spring forward –

A hand caught her back. "Wait," said Melinna intently.

The bristling beard of Mili the Dwarf emerged from behind the gatekeeper's lodge. "_Sugar_," said the Elf in that silky Elvish language. She slung her heavy bag into Gogol's arms, causing Gogol to stagger slightly; the startled dragonet followed suit, much to Gogol's surprise. It seemed inclined to be indignant about such summary treatment. "Shush, you," said Melinna, pinching shut the dragonet's muzzle. "Behave."

She was pulling off her grey cloak, which she draped around Gogol's shoulders. It was far too long for Gogol and dragged in the mud.

Gogol gaped up from under the hood. "What –?"

There were two other Dwarves with Mili; they disappeared through the gate, evidently taking up position on the other side of the hedge. The gatekeeper had vanished into the relative safety of his lodge. Mili positioned himself stolidly in the middle of the open gateway, axe in hand. His helmet was polished to a mirror's shine.

"Listen," said Melinna in a swift undertone. The dragonet meeped and made a futile attempt to clamber back into her arms; she unhooked its pewter claws from her tunic, returning it firmly to Gogol's bewildered clutches. "I'm going to talk to them. You stay here until you see a chance to sneak past us. Head west for the Old Forest. If Erestor or I don't find you first, you're looking for a couple called Goldberry and Iarwain ben-Adar. Got that?"

"Yeah – uh –"

"Good girl."

She gave the unhappy dragonet one last pat and went lightly out into the sun.

They had been hiding some fifty yards away from the West-gate, halfway up a gentle hill. Melinna drew her sword and strolled down the slope just far enough to exchange words with the Dwarf without having to shout. Her unheralded appearance seemed to surprise Mili, although possibly that was because she was there alone.

"Good morning," she said in Khuzdul. "I believe you were looking for me."

The Dwarvish tongue was not commonly heard now that Durin's city had fallen; it had been rather rarely heard even before that, since Dwarves tended to be secretive around other races. In this respect, Melinna's advantage was one of Elvish antiquity: several ages of the world earlier, she and Erestor had dwelt for a time in Nogrod and Belegost, the Dwarven mansions later destroyed by the sinking of Beleriand beneath the sea. It plainly puzzled Mili to hear an Elf speaking Khuzdul; his beard acquired a pained expression and he lowered his axe.

"'He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason'," he replied soberly in the same language, which made Melinna blink; and then, which made Melinna blink even more, he continued in flawless, if rather stilted, Sindarin, "There is no need for our business to be transacted in my ancestral tongue, sir. I am quite competent to converse in yours."

"So I see," said Melinna, amused. The quotation was familiar, if not particularly relevant; it was a pleasant surprise to find that such ancient lore still lingered even among the vagabond Dwarven clans. "Very well, if you'd rather. What business would you like to transact? And tell me, where did you pick up a dragon's egg? I hope you managed to get away without leaving a trail; I'd hate to think of an angry dragon following you down the Greenway to Bree."

"That is no concern of yours. Return to me the hatchling and the thief, sir, and you shall be troubled no longer."

Melinna shook her head. "Can't do that," she said and smiled at him. "The girl ran off with it. Besides, I can't help but feel that someone who'll go to the trouble of stealing an egg from a cold-drake is the last person who should be allowed to bring one up. Who's your Lady Inez and why are you following a Mannish woman?"

The Dwarf stared back at her, unblinking. "That also is no concern of yours. Where did the thief go? And where is your companion?"

"I haven't a clue," said Melinna, with cheerful mendacity. "Where's your mistress? Back at the Inn?"

"The lady," said Mili stiffly, "is not my mistress. Our agreement is one of mutual benefit –"

"– and she just happens to give the orders? Well, if you say so!"

Mili's beard was beginning to look decidedly put-out. "Are you mocking me, sir?"

"I would never mock a Dwarf," said Melinna sweetly. "You make such a delightful mockery of yourselves unassisted. What is it your elders used to say, 'it is a great thing to know one's vices'?"

"'When, O Elf, do you mean to cease abusing our patience?'" the Dwarf retorted in kind. His brows lowered ominously. "Do you take me for a fool? I can see that you are the Elf who drew my men off on a wild goose chase. The thief and the hatchling must be in the company of your friend. What, sir, have you to say to that?"

Melinna was a shade surprised.

"That's a rather good guess," she said. "Well done. What would you like me to do about it?"

"I'll leave that to Lady Inez to decide!" snapped Mili and gave a piercing whistle. The other two Dwarves appeared immediately through the West-gate; they both held longbows, arrows nocked on the string.

It was hard to quarrel with arguments of such calibre. Melinna sheathed her sword. An interview with Mili's mysterious benefactor might well be interesting, if no obvious opportunities for escape turned up on the way to the Inn, and meanwhile Gogol and the dragonet could put a safe distance between themselves and Bree. Erestor was bound to have some sharp words for her later, of course, but that was another matter entirely.

"Very well," she said lightly. "Take me to the lady!"

**~o~O~o~**

Some time after the little procession had disappeared into Bree, a pale face peered cautiously out of the shadows. No danger presented itself, either in the alley or in the street beyond. The gate stood open.

In her arms, the dragonet wriggled furiously. "Ow!" said Gogol, discovering too late the dangers of clutching a cat-sized creature with rather more than cat-sized claws. She bundled it up in the extraneous folds of the Elf's excessively large cloak, hoping to baffle the beast in silky Elvish cloth. "Stoppit!"

The whining noise it made was intolerable. Gogol abandoned all hope of stealth, clutched the dragonet and Melinna's bag as securely as she could, and tumbled headlong down the hill and out of the West-gate.

Overhead the sky was bright with morning, blue as the dragon's eyes. The Road was rutted and thick with mud. No sounds of pursuit followed, which might have reassured Gogol, had she been in less of a hurry to get away from Bree. She splashed heedlessly through puddles and potholes, not caring about grime or that the Elf-cloak dragged behind her through the filth. Nor did she stop running until her legs gave out; and since Gogol was something of an expert at absenting herself from awkward situations, she was well beyond the crossing of the Great East Road and the Greenway by then.

Exhaustion shimmered dizzily. Gogol scrambled across the dike with its thorny hedge, collapsing scratched and breathless onto the springy grass. The sun was warm on her face. Swathed in her coat and Melinna's cloak, she found herself sweltering. In a moment, she was going to throw up.

She didn't. It was a close thing, though.

Presently, when the dragonet's whining and scrabbling became too insistent to ignore, Gogol dragged herself into a vaguely upright position and threw off the Elf-cloak. From its folds erupted the dragonet in a fury of silver. It was hissing white mist again, ice crystals glittering between its sharp little teeth. Gogol eyed it warily and wondered whether she would actually be able to catch it again if it ran away.

"Hey –" she said aloud. "Ain't my idea, this. The Elf said to. You know. Melinna."

The dragonet glared at her. Its tail switched wrathfully in the grass.

It occurred to Gogol that it was time for breakfast, a meal to which she was firmly attached. She had just run several miles on little sleep and less food; no wonder she was feeling shaky now. Maybe food would sweeten the dragonet's temper.

Maybe there was food in Melinna's bag.

She got as far as unknotting the bag's fastenings. At this point, her perfectly innocent intentions were foiled by the dragonet, which launched itself at her in a blaze of spitting rage. A freezing blast drove Gogol backwards, yelping. She rubbed the ice from her eyelashes and saw the dragonet perched smugly on the bag, apparently under the impression that it had been assigned the solemn duty of guarding Melinna's possessions. Frost was forming on the leather beneath its claws.

"Oh," said Gogol. "Uh."

By now she knew better than to meet the dragonet's eyes. No breakfast, then. Maybe she could find some berries or something along the way. There were bound to be berries, right? People sold berries in the market all summer. She liked berries. _No_ problem. As long as she could get the dragonet to cooperate.

"Tell you what," she said. "You sit in the bag, right? An' I'll carry you in that..."

The dragonet, of course, was perfectly oblivious to this sensible suggestion. When Gogol reached gingerly for the bag's leather straps, however, the dragonet refrained from mauling her or blasting her with its wintry breath. Gogol took this to mean that she would be tolerated as long as she kept her hands out of the bag itself. It fluttered its wings to keep its balance when Gogol swung the bag onto her back; and when she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, it clawed its way nimbly to the open top and slithered inside. The chirrup that emerged was decidedly imperious.

So that was that. Gogol gathered up the Elf-cloak and looked around.

An emptiness of green slopes stretched out on all sides, capped here and there by tooth-like standing stones. Bree was still visible behind her. West, the Elf had said. That might have meant more to a girl who hadn't spent her whole short life in a town, but Gogol was nothing if not tenacious. She had heard enough tales in her aunt's alehouse to know the Road passed close by the Old Forest. All she had to do was to follow the Great East Road.

But it would be stupid to walk on the Road itself. The Dwarves had ponies; if she stayed on the Road, they could catch up with her easily. She should walk across the downs instead, like a proper Ranger's brat. And that way she could look for berries at the same time.

Determinedly, hungrily and very unwisely, Gogollescent Ferny set out into the Barrowdowns.


	4. Sleep under stone

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

**~ _sleep under stone_ ~**

**~o~O~o~  
**

_I never forget stories! But sometimes I forget that when I only write them in my head, only I can read them... anyway, here's the next installment, rather later than originally expected. Many thanks as ever to my beta-readers and also to the lovely Aislynn Crowdaughter, who has gone to the trouble of nominating this trivial tale of urchins, dragon cubs and stunningly glamorous lady-villains for MEFA 2010._

**~o~O~o~**

At this point, it should probably be noted that while Gogol might have been a Ranger's brat, a decent sense of direction was not among the qualities Nature had seen fit to transmit from her unknown father. Had anyone been tracking her progress through the sunlit hills, they would have observed her gradual divergence from the line of the Great East Road, drifting unwittingly deep into the Barrowdowns. In her defence, this was very easily done, since those few paths that made any pretence of existing had a nasty tendency to slope seductively in precisely the wrong direction at any given time.

Not that hypothetical observers are usually inclined to be charitable, of course. Nor are dragonets. The grumbling noises emanating from the bag on Gogol's back kept Gogol uneasily in mind of her reluctant passenger, as did its habit of wriggling at awkward moments. Gogol thought it must be investigating the bag's contents, which naturally made her fingers itch to do the same. The first time she dropped panting onto the springy turf, however, the dragonet stuck its sleek silver head out of the bag with an irritable hiss, clearly wondering why she had stopped and wanting her to get moving again.

Gogol rolled her eyes. "Not gonna," she said. She bundled Melinna's cloak into a crumpled ball and shoved it under her head for a pillow, yawning. "Gimme a break!"

It was very warm and the sky blazed clear and cloudless overhead. With her eyes closed against the midday sun, Gogol would probably have fallen asleep, had her rest not been rudely interrupted by a sharp tug at her hair.

"Ow!" she said and reopened her eyes.

And sat up abruptly. The dragonet had slithered half out of the leather bag and tangled its talons into her spiky mop, its tongue flicking snakishly close to her face. A confused moment followed in which Gogol batted frantically at the clinging dragonet and yelped "Geroff! Geroff!" while the dragonet whined overhead and flapped its translucent wings just as frantically in order to stay attached. Icy droplets burned against Gogol's scalp.

The bag lay open in the grass. Gogol reached for it desperately.

This turned out to be the correct move. At once the dragonet untangled itself and leapt for the dark cavern of the bag's interior, slithering so fast it blurred silver. The bag bulged as the dragonet reclaimed its lair, settling down smugly with the tip of its muzzle poking out under the battered leather. Several long black hairs clutched in its folded forepaws were already taking on a frosty glitter.

Gogol rubbed her stinging scalp and sat back ruefully. So much for that nap!

It didn't help that so far she hadn't come across _any_ berries. Given Gogol's complete ignorance of the difference between, say, blackcurrants and belladonna, this was certainly for the best; naturally this point did not occur to her. She was hungry and tired and her feet hurt and now her head hurt too. And she couldn't even console herself with a rummage through an Elf's luggage, which did seem terribly unfair, considering that the Elf had _given_ it to her. If you couldn't take a look at someone else's stuff when you'd been given it by someone all of their own free will, what was the point of anything? And she'd gone to all the trouble of stealing the dragonet in the first place and now it was biting her and trying to boss her around and pulling her hair, and _that _wasn't fair either.

She heaved a huge sigh and clambered back up to her aching feet. "Bad Sugar!" she said loudly in the dragonet's general direction, having forgotten the relevant Elvish word. "Don't do it again!"

A rude chirrup emerged from the bag. Sugar did not sound impressed.

And it kept muttering incomprehensibly in Gogol's ear when she started walking again, which really didn't help the headache she'd been incubating ever since Bree. She might have minded less, only the dragonet had stuck its head out of the bag again and was peering over her shoulder with its claws hooked into her tattered shirt, and she was getting a distinct feeling that it had drawn blood. Feathers clung to the dragonet's silvery muzzle, which inclined Gogol to suspect it had found breakfast and possibly also lunch in the Elf's bag. All in all, she was feeling decidedly hard-done-by. She wandered sulkily between two huge standing stones patched with moss and curling lichen. How could she lure the dragonet out of the bag? Was there even anything left to eat in there by now?

The path had taken an upwards turn towards the rounded hilltop. Sweat prickled under Gogol's shirt and sweltered in her heavy boots. She was carrying her oversized coat now as well as Melinna's cloak. She gritted her teeth and climbed doggedly onwards.

A carpet of grass spread invitingly over the top of the hill, sprinkled with daisies and the odd yellow dandelion. The path seemed to have petered out, which a proper Ranger's brat might have taken as a warning. Gogol dumped her armful of unnecessary garments on the ground and stared around, a chill that had nothing to do with sweat fizzing down her back as she realised she couldn't see the Great East Road anywhere.

She _was _still going in the right direction... right?

To her left, a great mound bulged stonily against the sun-filled sky. Gogol slung Melinna's bag down on top of the clothes, ignoring the dragonet's indignant squeak, and clambered up to the top of the mound, skinning at least one knee in the process. The additional height of this new vantage point, unfortunately, made no difference whatsoever to the complete invisibility of her main landmark. She rubbed her knee and peered worriedly across the green hilltops stretching out in all directions. Still no Road. On the plus side, she couldn't see any Dwarves either. So that was something.

A chirrup from below distracted her. The dragonet had emerged from its leather lair and was nosing around the loose stones at the base of the mound.

"Hey –" said Gogol, alarmed.

The dragonet glanced upwards, blinked its innocent blue serpent-eyes and disappeared through a crack with a flick of its silver tail.

Gogol's first thought was that now she could _finally _get a look in Melinna's bag. Her second thought involved the Elves and their probable reaction to finding out that Gogol had lost the dragonet. Visions of Elvish cities (or at least what Gogol imagined Elvish cities would look like) flickered before her eyes, only to be replaced by bearded Dwarvish faces. Very angry ones. She scrambled back down the mound in panicky haste.

Grass and trailing ivy lay green over the mound; but beneath the greenery a slab of grey stone only a little taller than Gogol herself stood slightly askew, a narrow crack slanting behind it into the mound. Gogol crouched in the grass and squinted gingerly through the crack.

Only darkness met her eyes. She hissed, "Sugar! Get back here!"

She thought she heard a distant chirrup. The dragonet did not reappear.

"_Sugar!_"

Still nothing. Gogol exhaled crossly.

The stone slab was heavy and ivy-tangled, but Gogol managed to heave it aside enough for the crack to stand almost an urchin's-width wide. An odd dusty smell drifted out of the darkness. She took a quick breath.

"All right," she said to herself. "Here goes nothin'!"

Even in its newly widened state, Gogol had to wriggle considerably to get through the crack. Luckily she had quite a lot of experience at wriggling into narrow nooks and crannies. On the other side of the crack, a dark space opened up, which was something of a relief, since Gogol had been afraid that the dragonet had disappeared down some animal's dragonet-sized burrow. As it was, she found herself in what seemed to be a sensibly-sized passageway. She felt cautiously around and waited for her eyes to acclimatise to the darkness.

"Sugar!" she hissed. "_Bad _dragon!"

From somewhere deep in the dark, a slight scraping sound could be heard. Gogol's ears at once translated this into the dragonet's pewter claws against the stone floor. This was confirmed by a distant and distinctly surprised 'meep'. Gogol started forwards into the murky passage.

It actually wasn't all that dark, now that she'd had time to get used to it. In fact, there must be another crack somewhere. Some sort of greenish light leaked into the shadows. She could just about make out the way the passage widened ahead.

Something bounced off her boot with a metallic clatter. The floor was strewn with peculiarly-shaped objects.

Was that a goblet?

She crouched down to investigate further. It _was_ a goblet. When she tapped a gnawed fingernail against the rim, a pleasantly golden 'ching' was produced. She began to feel around herself with mounting excitement. A fine chain with some sort of pendant attached – into the goblet with it – and here was (she ran her fingers round it) some sort of circlet – and another goblet – and a dagger in an embossed sheath – and the edge of a shield – and a ring with several _very_ large jewels –

She heard a growl from the dragonet at the other end of the passage. "Oh, shut up!" said Gogol absently, her attention fixed on cataloguing her gains.

Here was another brooch – why hadn't anyone _told _her there was treasure on the downs –?

The dragonet skittered out of the greenish murk and straight into Gogol's accumulated treasure-heap, startling Gogol considerably. It gripped something long and gnarled between its sharp little teeth. Gogol took this at first for a stick; then she realised that it was attached to a clawlike hand, and that the long-nailed fingers still clutched vainly at empty shadows.

She scrabbled backwards with a startled yelp. The dragonet was pawing at its horrible trophy, apparently trying to subdue it.

A dark figure loomed monstrous in the passageway. Gogol yelped again and redoubled her scrabbling efforts, abandoning both her treasure and the dragonet. She saw pale eyes gleaming from the gloom. It was reaching towards her with, she could not help but notice, only one arm.

Long nails scraped her face. Gogol was transfixed by a chill of horror –

A strong hand grasped her collar. Much to her surprise, she found herself being hauled back through the crack into sunlight, acquiring several new scrapes and bruises along the way, and deposited ungently on the grass.

She sat up, choking. One of the Elves was standing there with a shoulder against the stone slab. By the swirling grey cloak, it must be Erestor. She saw his white face when the dragonet scampered out from under the slab after her and laid the Barrow-wight's arm proudly at his feet, its fingers still clawing frostily at the grass.

The Elf uttered a very sharp word and kicked the quivering thing back into its barrow. Then he set his shoulder against the stone slab again and gave it a tremendous shove. It grated back into place.

"Elbereth!" he said and snatched up his wife's bag. The dragonet coiled whining around his feet. Erestor reached down, which enabled it to scramble directly up his arm, making liberal use of its claws, and slither into the hammock of his grey hood. It peeked out under his dark braid and gave a happy little chirrup, nuzzling lovingly against his neck.

Gogol found herself staring up into a decidedly displeased Elven face and a pair of smug blue serpent-eyes. She wasn't sure which was more disconcerting.

"You've got a real talent for finding trouble, haven't you?" said the Elf. "Wandering into a wight's barrow! Why didn't you stick to the Road? You've been wandering all over the downs, child!"

He set Gogol on her feet by further application of her collar as a handle. "Get your things," he added. "This isn't a good place to be. Ever. Come on."

She had to scurry to keep up with him. He strode surefooted over the hillside, paying no heed whatsoever to the path trailing temptingly back up the valley towards the standing stones. "Hey –" she said plaintively. "How'd you find –?"

"Easily. You're not hard to track."

"But the Dwarves –"

"Still chasing along the road east of Bree, I should think." He scratched the dragonet under its chin and shuddered as it purred white mist in his ear. "Dwarves have no imagination. Where's Melinna?"

"Uh..."

The Elf swerved round with an abruptness that startled Gogol almost as much as the Barrow-wight had done. He seemed very tall suddenly, and very frightening. He said harshly, "What's happened? What's she done?"

Gogol gulped and told him.

Erestor's response was in Elvish and seemed to be addressed to his absent wife. Gogol was pretty sure it wasn't complimentary. "I shouldn't let her go off on her own!" he concluded crossly in his silky Westron. "Elbereth!"

**~o~O~o~**

Back in Bree, the individual currently known as Lady Inez was not having a good day.

Actually, that was an understatement. Lady Inez was having an _awful_ day. It showed in her hair, which had burst free of its nacreous constraints and snarled golden over her shoulders in tangled fury, rather than the shimmering waterfall of ringlets that usually complemented her effortless elegance. If things didn't start looking up soon, there was a decent chance it would start trying to eat people.

At least she'd managed to maintain her perfect complexion. So far.

Elves! They really did spoil _all_ her fun.

The thought, along with associated memories, made her scowl harder. This caused a nervous shadow to fall over the beard of the pet Dwarf currently in attendance by the door, which brought to mind another of Lady Inez's grievances. Dwarves! Oh, they were all so proud of their ancient lore and their forges and their mountain halls and their elaborate social conventions and their road-building (as if there was anything particularly special about that! why, a whip and a couple of hundred Orcs was all anyone needed to build roads across the continent), but give them the simplest of morally ambiguous tasks and look what happened!

It was bad enough that Kat Ferny had failed so dismally to retrieve the Thing from that thieving urchin. The woman was only mortal, after all. Under other circumstances, Lady Inez would happily have had the wretched alewife disembowelled _pour encourager les autres_; but given the shocking state of contemporary politics and her current place in it, which was to say as unnoticed as possible, she was willing to forgo the usual punishment for an agent's failure. But Mili had managed to let the Thing _and _the thief _and _a pair of meddling Elves slip through his stubby little fingers. And since Inez was currently obliged to rely on Mili and his Dwarves, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

_Yet_.

She glared at her mirror. Dwarves were such ridiculous creatures. All this fussing about right and lawfulness and the correct way to talk to women. (Why were Dwarves so concerned about talking to women anyway? They hardly had any of their own.) All of their Maker's stodginess and none of His – none of His – well, whatever redeeming features Aulë might have, His hairy pets had none of them! If only she could have brought a battalion of Orcs through the Brown Lands and over the Misty Mountains without attracting the attention of any prying Wizards or Elf-lords. Curse them all!

A beard appeared around the door. "Ma'am, Mili's returned..."

... with a prisoner. One of the two meddling Elves. Perhaps Dwarves were not quite so useless after all.

Lady Inez smoothed the silver-patterned black silk of her skirts and rose gracefully from her chair. She did glance into the mirror one last time before she left the room, though, just to be sure her anger hadn't written itself literally all over her perfect, polished face.

The Elf had been taken to one of _The Pony_'s parlours and secured to a chair with the aid of substantial amounts of rope. Being an Elf, he might as well have been lounging on a gilded throne; he had stretched out his long legs casually and his expression as Lady Inez entered suggested only critical interest. She had paused on the threshold, mostly for effect, and was therefore annoyed when the Elf said lightly, for all as if he owned the place, "_Do _come in."

"I need no invitation from you, Elf," said Lady Inez frostily.

She entered the parlour, gesturing for her attendant to close the door. Mili stood by the Elf's chair with the naked edge of his axe gleaming in the shadows. Weapons were piled at his feet. "We caught him by the West-gate, ma'am," he reported. "He was distracting us while his companion escaped with the thief and the hatchling."

Lady Inez's newfound respect for Dwarves plummeted. She said, "And you _let_ him?"

"Ma'am?"

"Never mind." She turned her attention back to the Elf, who was regarding her with a rather maddening lack of anything resembling fear. "I suppose you think you're very clever?"

The Elf yawned in a way that implied agreement. "Tell me," he said, "what _are _you doing with a dragon's egg? It's not what one expects to find in a lady's baggage. Did you steal it from the dragon-mother yourself?"

"You're in no position to ask questions, Elf. What have you done with it?"

"Nothing," said the Elf. "Do I look like I'm carrying a dragon around with me?"

Even nervousness would have done. Lady Inez thought wistfully of happier times when merely glancing in someone's direction could produce instant cowering.

She changed tack, and also tone. "The recovery of my stolen possession means a great deal to me," she said, dropping the pitch of her voice to a seductive purr. "Procuring it for the sake of my political experiments was not an easy matter and I should be grateful for your assistance in this matter. _Very_ grateful."

She leaned forwards slightly, allowing the sweep of her gown's deep neckline to do the rest.

"I'm sure you would," said the Elf, eyeing her décolletage with mild appreciation. "Come back when you've got something I want and we'll talk."

At this point, Lady Inez was obliged to clasp her hands together behind her slender back. She had a great deal invested in the Dwarvish conviction that a beautiful blonde woman could be up to no harm, and punching the amusement right out of the Elf's dark eyes was not likely to do much for her standing among her current henchpersons.

She said tightly, "We know you were on your way to Imladris. Your companion and the thief will be captured on the Road. Obstinacy will get you nowhere."

The Elf blinked twice. "My," he said, "how clever of you! They _will_ be surprised. You might as well tell me what you planning to do with the dragon, in that case. It's rather an exotic sort of pet. Political experiments, did you say?"

This wasn't getting anywhere. Lady Inez narrowed her eyes.

"What is your name?" she said. "Why did you get involved?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," said the Elf. "What's _your_ name? I don't believe it's Inez."

It wasn't, as it happened. Not that the Elf needed to know that, let alone Mili or his Dwarves.

Lady Inez took another, longer look at the Elf. He was as fair and youthful as any of his kind, his skin smooth and his black hair untouched by grey, but a touch of agelessness clung to him that hinted at a very great age indeed.

She didn't recognise him, though. And his eyes were dark for a Noldo or a Sinda.

"What are you," she said, "some wild Avar? Meddling because you feel like it?"

The Elf smirked at her. "Pretty much," he said. "What, were you expecting someone more interesting? That can be arranged."

All her careful plans upset by the whims of a couple of insignificant Dark Elves!

Lady Inez was altogether too angry to respond. She tightened her hands behind her back and concentrated on her complexion. It was too late for her hair. She could feel it seething in serpentine coils over her shoulders, the tresses reaching hungrily in the direction of the nearest Dwarf.

"Mili," she said carefully, when she could speak again. "Since this gentleman is determined to be unhelpful, kindly convey him to the Machine. As the first test subject, he may at the very least further the cause of Science through an interesting and unusual death."


	5. Inez and the Machine

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

**~ _inez and the machine_ ~**

**~o~O~o~  
**

_Many thanks to a certain gorgeously gowned personage for the cunning schematics! They were indeed VERY CUNNING. To those to whom this tale is dedicated I owe inspiration and encouragement, as ever; and thanks again to the lovely Aislynn Crowdaughter for nominating this trivial tale of urchins, dragon cubs and stunningly glamorous lady-villains for MEFA 2010._

**~o~O~o~**

The Machine was currently installed on one of the Dwarvish wagons standing in _The Pony_'s yard. In appearance, it was superficially no more than a massive and particularly ornate cabinet constructed from a peculiar greenish-black wood that had been polished to a glossy mirror-sheen; but a long silver lever protruded from the lefthand side and there was nothing ornamental about the iron Dwarvish lock bulging next to it. Lady Inez had already decided to have the lock replaced at the first opportunity, along with the tasteless Dwarvish locksmith. It really spoilt the look of things.

The key, at least, was suitably frightful. She drew it out with a flourish.

"Ma'am," said Mili at her elbow, "are you sure –"

"Of course I'm sure," said Lady Inez, who did not appreciate being questioned by her henchpersons and who maintained a mental list of similar transgressions that Mili would very much regret one day, if she had any say in the matter. Which she would. She inserted the key in the monstrous lock, turned it three times, paused for the precisely five seconds required to deactivate the poisoned darts, and then twisted it once more with a flick of her slim wrist.

The glossy door swung open. Inside, a complex array of crystals and interlocking brass gears glittered beneath a protective glass case. The glass was inscribed with eldritch symbols that would certainly be a mystery to just about everyone on this side of the sundering sea; Lady Inez had spent a great deal of time laboriously drawing them out on the journey south down the Greenway. The cabinet itself and most of the gears had been already in place before she had begun this expedition, but she had not known what crystals she would be able to retrieve from the cold-wyrm's hoard until the deed was done. In the event, she had been decidedly satisfied with her haul. If Dwarves were good for anything, it was recovering treasure.

Lady Inez had inserted the last glittering crystal into its painstakingly prepared socket only the previous evening, mere moments before being informed of the theft of the dragon's egg. It was small consolation that she would be able to test her handiwork so soon.

"Kindly place the test subject inside, Mili," she added. "Unless you would prefer to suggest an alternative candidate? Whichever of your Dwarves was meant to have been guarding the chest containing the egg last night would be _wholly _suitable."

Mili's beard was looking particularly repressive. He grunted something indistinct (yet another of his apparently inexhaustible stock of irrelevant antique aphorisms, Lady Inez translated, in the irritable privacy of her own head) and gestured to the flock of heavily-armed Dwarves milling around the Dark Elf, still tied into his chair. The chair was at once hoisted up into the wagon on the shoulders of half a dozen burly Dwarves; a moment's confusion followed, as it was realised that only the back of the Elf's head could now be seen; then the chair was turned around in the yawning cabinet and the Dwarves leapt away from the wagon with indecent haste, apparently keen to put a safe distance between themselves and Lady Inez's Machine.

The Dark Elf wasn't smirking any more. Lady Inez took that as a personal triumph.

"Thank you," she said to Mili, who alone still stood, stolid and foursquare, at her side. "I trust we may now proceed."

"I don't like to ask," said the Dark Elf from his chair, eyeing the gears and crystals gleaming on the inside of the Machine's open door, "but what is this interesting contraption meant to do? The last time I saw writing like that, it was manifesting itself in the mithril mines under Hadhodrond – and before that, scrawled all over the ruins of Tol-in-Gaurhoth –"

Lady Inez was pardonably annoyed by this far from helpful interpolation. "Wait and see, you nosy Avar!" she snapped, thinking it _would _be just her luck to run into such a well-travelled individual. Tol-in-Gaurhoth was a name that cast long shadows. At the mention of his ancestral home, Mili's beard had bristled all over with interest; for once, wisely, he said nothing. "What's a First Age Elf doing wandering around Bree?"

"It's as good a place as any to wander," said the Dark Elf sweetly. "Besides, I have friends in the area. What's a lady with a Númenórean name and a dragon's egg and a cupboard covered in very nasty writing doing in Bree?"

"Passing through! And I'd have been well on my way, if it hadn't been for you meddling Dark Elves –"

The Dark Elf yawned. "Of course, of course," he murmured. "Now about this writing..."

Lady Inez's hair was beginning to unravel into hungry golden tendrils again. Realising this, she did her best to catch her temper along with her breath. She counted slowly to ten in her head, and then expanded that to twenty when she saw the Dark Elf's mouth curl.

"I am quite disappointed," she said, instead of taking Mili's axe and using it to remove that resurgent smirk. "Surely you intended to attempt a daring escape? Will your companion spring from an upper window to rescue you? Or perhaps you have some other cunning plan to remove yourself from this predicament, now that the last minute has arrived?"

The Dark Elf flexed his wrists under the ropes and grimaced. "Sadly, no. Your henchdwarves are too good with knots. I did consider trying to break free, but the restraints are too tight. So I suppose I'll have to see what the writing's for from the inside."

He did not seem overly concerned by this prospect. Bitter thoughts arose in Lady Inez's head about the Elvish propensity for levity. If only this Elf had been a Noldo! Lady Inez appreciated the Noldor: they took life seriously, and often. A Noldo would have had the grace to threaten and bluster and swear unwise oaths of impossible vengeance, at the very least.

She said coldly, "You will. And I am done talking with you."

The wood of the Machine hummed under her fingertips. "Tell my husband –" said the Dark Elf, in the same breath that Mili said, "_Husband_?" and a thoroughly exasperated Lady Inez demanded, "Did I express an interest in last words?" as she slammed shut the polished door.

With a whirring and clicking of internal gears, she wrenched the silver lever right down to the ground. It sounded like clockwork being wound up, which was approximately the case. When Lady Inez released the lever, it shuddered and began to grind back into its original upright position, one jarring notch at a time. A faint white light glowed around the edges of the door, growing gradually brighter as the brass gears within the Machine continued to revolve.

"Husband?" said Mili again, sounding a little sickened. "Was the Elf – a _woman_?"

Dwarves did have such absurd scruples. "Not necessarily," said Lady Inez, trying to concentrate on the noises the Machine was making. She had been obliged to substitute a number of jewels and was not completely sure how the alterations would affect the outcome of this experiment. Everything seemed to be working satisfactorily so far. "I recall I once viewed some positively educational frescoes in what remained of Gondolin –"

Abruptly, the Machine began to shake violently on its carved claw-feet. A barely-muffled scream from the test subject cut through the air, informing Lady Inez that she would have to improve the Machine's soundproofing. The light was almost unbearably brilliant.

Any moment now...

With a flash, the light went red and snapped out. The Machine juddered into stillness.

Red? _That _wasn't meant to happen. Those rubies, Lady Inez was thinking crossly as she fumbled with the lock: she should have known better – she _had_ known better – if she'd only thought to bring along a couple of spare amethysts – but what difference would it make to the results of the experiment? Would it make any difference at all? Her calculations hadn't indicated –

She flung open the door. The test subject was slumped forwards against the ropes securing him (or possibly her) to the chair. His (or possibly her) head hung slack, a string of saliva drooling from the gaping mouth. The braided hair had come loose from its ties and fell in a wild mass of fine plaits all about the subject's head and shoulders.

It was pink.

_Bright _pink. A flock of flamingos gorged on canthaxanthin could not have been pinker.

"What?" said Lady Inez blankly. "Why did that happen?"

Beneath the peculiar pink braids, the subject's heartbeat was strong. When Lady Inez lifted up his (or her) chin, though, that androgynous Elvish face might have been a wax mask. Peeling back the eyelids revealed pupils contracted to pinpricks and no sign of consciousness whatsoever. The subject was wholly unresponsive. The Machine was not much better: the crystals embedded in the door no longer glowed and the inscribed sigils were dark and lifeless. The last of the gears spun slowly to a halt under Lady Inez's eyes.

Damn.

"She's not dead, ma'am!" blurted Mili, seizing on the blindingly obvious in his usual helpful way. He was leaning forwards on his iron-soled toes, his beard eager. "She's still breathing! The Machine didn't kill her!"

Lady Inez scowled into the subject's comatose face. Now that she was looking for it, she could tell the subject probably was female, which helped nothing at all. Mili and his Dwarves would undoubtedly want to be chivalrous – not that chivalry would do the subject any good at this stage, if the Machine had even partly achieved its purpose. Lady Inez had had such high hopes of separating Elves from their fëar as a means to control them. Maybe it would work better on mortal subjects.

She realised Mili was awaiting a response. "Naturally," she said. "Why would I build a Machine to kill people? I have you to do that for me. Now kindly remove the Elf to somewhere more appropriate. Put her with the artefacts. I'll need to run more tests on her."

Mili tugged at his beard in a transparent attempt to disguise the suspicion currently radiating from the top of his shiny helmet to the iron soles of his boots. "Tests, ma'am?"

"Yes, Mili, tests," said Lady Inez coldly, adding this latest hint of insubordination to the mental charge-sheet. Maybe Mili should be the Machine's next test subject. That would be a thoroughly suitable punishment. "Obviously it will have to wait until my property has been recovered from the other Elf and that wretched little thief who stole it in the first place. And be so good as to bring me their heads, while you're at it. I believe I'll have them preserved as a warning for anyone else who thinks it might be a bright idea to steal from me."

**~o~0~o~**

The dragonet was discovering cream. Noisily.

A broad dish filled to the brim sat on the dark polished table. All around glimmered a maze of yellow candles, which was perhaps imprudent, since the dragonet had taken to cream like a frog to a lily-pool. Little white paw-prints and gradually merging puddles were already splattered across the table, and the dragonet itself was hanging half into the dish with its tail knotted around the base of a nearby candlestick, its muzzle deep in the cream and flapping its translucent silver wings frantically every time it seemed about to lose its balance. Bubbles swirled on the foaming surface.

Gogol, whose feet hurt more than ever and who did not like mushrooms, was sulking.

Chasing Erestor across the Barrowdowns had not made for a pleasant afternoon. She had scurried and stumbled and pulled grotesque faces up at the bright blue serpent-eyes smirking out of the Elf's hood; and when, after much whining, she had convinced the Elf to take a break for lunch, they had rested for a bare twenty minutes before moving on. Lunch, which had emerged from Erestor's leather bag in the form of stale bread and a piece of hairy cheese, had been decidedly unsatisfactory. Didn't the Elf have anything better? No, said Erestor shortly; and furthermore the dragonet _had_ made a feast of the pair of partridges stored in his wife's bag, so unless Gogol stopped complaining and started walking, there would be nothing better for dinner either. No wonder the little beast purred so happily against the absentminded touch of his fingertips.

There was blood in the west and the stars were out by the time they came to the crumpled edge of the downs. Ahead, the Elf's shadow blended seamlessly into the darkening dusk. Only the glimmer of the dragonet on his shoulder kept him from disappearing entirely, a ghost on silent feet striding over the springy grass. Stumbling miserably behind, Gogol had been too fixated on her aching legs to notice when the track first became a stone-edged path.

One foot in front of the other. Her battered boots were lead-heavy. She had trudged glumly onwards up the slope, not really caring any more where she was going, or why, until she collided with a solid round body in the dark and rebounded with a surprised yelp.

Before her loomed a terrifying shadow, bulbous and deformed, blotting out the friendly glimmer of distant yellow lantern-light with its hugeness. She had scrabbled backwards in panic, recalling the cadaverous wight in its barrow.

"Hey now," boomed a deep voice, "where be you a-going to? Are you not come seeking Tom Bombadil's house under Hill?"

And then, to Gogol's horror, the monstrous figure had removed its own head.

If there had been more light, she might have made it to the river (and then fallen in) before Erestor caught up with her. As it was, she was still accelerating when she felt the Elf's hand on the back of her collar. Because it was dark and his fingers were cold, she thought it must be a Barrow-wight and let out a howl of terror. It was not much comfort to have Erestor say irritably, "Oh, do shut up!" and give her a brisk shake. "Where do you think you're going?"

"But – b-but –"

"This is Iarwain ben-Adar," said the Elf, with a nod for the shadowy figure advancing down the slope. "The Master of wood, water and hill. Also known as Tom Bombadil."

The shadowy figure had resolved itself before Gogol's astounded eyes into that of a plump old man attached to a beard worthy of one of Mili's Dwarves. Under his arm, he carried a tall-crowned hat, which he now replaced on his head. "Erestor!" he cried, and followed that up with a string of silky nonsense that Gogol supposed must be Elvish. His voice was deep and merry.

"Yes, yes, quite," said the Elf, in Westron. "He never did have much of a sense of humour. I'll have a word with Elrond when we're next there. Sorry, but may we go in? It's been a long day. Melinna and I were on our way here when we ran into something very odd going on in Bree. And this urchin escaped a flock of feral Dwarves and a Barrow-wight today, and I think she's about to fall over..."

They had followed the old man, Tom Bombadil, up the slope and over the wide stone threshold into a pool of yellow light. Gogol had still been more than a little dazed. She had collapsed onto the rush-seated chair pulled out for her by Erestor and stared, bewildered, at the vision of clashing colours thus revealed. Old Tom's coat was blue and his boots were yellow and when he caught her staring, he grinned through his beard, his ruddy face folding into a labyrinth of laughter-lines.

"Are my guests hungry?" he said to Erestor. "Shall Tom set a supper for you?"

"Please," said Erestor, sinking back into his corner with every appearance of relief. A frown crossed his smooth brow; he reached back over his shoulder and extracted the dragonet from the folds of his shadow-grey hood, where it had been sound asleep like a silver cat. It was curled sluggishly in his hands, blinking its blue eyes and yawning so that all its sharp little teeth gleamed under the light of the lanterns hanging from the ceiling beams. The tip of its tail swung over the polished tabletop.

Old Tom Bombadil had stared, and pulled convulsively at his brown beard. "I don't suppose," said the Elf, "you'd know what one of these eats?"

The dragonet sneezed frost all over his fingers. "Aññolë!"

Erestor winced. "No!" he said severely to the dragonet, while Tom Bombadil burst out laughing. "That is _not_ what you eat. Iarwain –"

A swift exchange in Elvish followed, during which Gogol sat uncomprehending and aching and thinking longingly of that promised supper. At last old Tom had glanced over at Gogol, his eyes unexpectedly shrewd, and cried merrily in Westron, "But let us have food and drink while we talk!" So food had appeared, and drinking-bowls of plain water, and now Gogol found herself picking through a dish of mushrooms and half-melted cheese while the dragonet drowned itself ecstatically in its bowl of yellow cream and the Elvish conversation continued over both their heads. All in all, Gogol was beginning to think she might have been better off leaving the iron chest and the dragon's egg alone.

She was dismally investigating a bowl of green herbs in the hope that it might turn out to contain something other than parsley when she heard her name spoken. "Gogol," said Erestor again, rapping on the table to attract her attention. "Listen, I'm going back to Bree to see what trouble my wife's got herself into. You and the dragon will stay here with Iarwain. Iarwain's wife is visiting her mother, so you probably won't meet her. Don't make a nuisance of yourself – no running off to steal treasure from any Barrow-wights, and don't try stealing from Iarwain either! When Melinna and I get back, we'll take you with us to Imladris, _if_ Iarwain tells us you've behaved yourself. Understand?"

Gogol looked across the table at Tom Bombadil. The old man beamed back.

She quailed.

**~o~0~o~**

Either the world swam slowly back into focus, or Melinna swam slowly back into the world. It was very hard to tell the difference. Everything had taken on a reddish tint, glassy and almost translucent, the outlines as sharp as a broken window with the sun pouring through. Except she couldn't make out any shapes, only edges in the pinkish distance, glittering razor-edged and wet with spilt blood.

She didn't know where she was and she couldn't remember why she was there. She was walking on naked feet over an endless blood-lapped shore of glassy shards and it didn't hurt at all.

It occurred to her to stop and try to work out what was going on.

There were cliffs on her left hand, towering red sandstone cliffs that oozed fluids from layered seams. Something about the shape of them jutting up against the hazy sky seemed familiar, vaguely, in a way too uncertain for specific recall. Beyond the promontory lay caves to be revealed by the retreating tide; Melinna remembered that, at least. But which shore this was, which people claimed it now, when she had last set foot upon these sands – all this was as lost to her as her reason for being there. As how she had got there. As where Erestor was...

Far ahead of her, walking in the shadow of the promontory, she saw a solitary figure wading ankle-deep in the scarlet froth.

Another Elf. His hair was dark and he was pale, his ragged clothing soaked in blood. He was singing to himself in a broken whisper; his voice might have been sweet once, but it was cracked now and the words fell huskily away. Melinna saw, as she came closer, the livid scars that tightened his useless hands to claws.

She knew him then. She knew him and could hear only Nimloth's screams, Nimloth screaming as Dior fell beneath the stone trees of Menegroth. Nimloth falling in blood as Dior had fallen, Thingol's heir and Lúthien's son, beneath Elvish blades. The light in their faces, in _his_ face, bright and blood-laced. She had been blinded by it, by that inner light blazing (because they were blessed, they had said, the homecoming Exiles, because they had seen the Blessed Realm) and the smoke as tapestries woven by Melian the Maia Queen went up in flames.

He went down without a word. He didn't even seem surprised. The bloody foam swirled all around and once, twice, three times she punched his head against the crystalline sand: Maglor Fëanorion, harpist unhanded, madness brighter than brilliance in his eyes. Bruises already blossomed beneath his skin. She seized his neck, her thumbs pressed hard against his windpipe –

– and stopped, aware suddenly that something was wrong. _This_ was wrong. Somehow.

His hair floated like dark seaweed in the tide. Blood lapped at his face, washing up over his bruised throat. He stared up at Melinna, his lips slightly parted. Her hands were scarlet and the foam blackened the grey skirt of her gown.

She said aloud, "It didn't happen like this. I only hit him once. Then Erestor stopped me. We had an agreement..."

The tide was coming in. Melinna was aware of it suddenly, and the smash of the waves on the shore.

"You're not Maglor," she said. "This already happened. It didn't happen like this."

She released him and stepped back. The blood was knee-deep now, swirling around her. She could feel the weight of it dragging down her skirt. Above the red cliffs, a bank of pinkish clouds was piling up in the sullen sky.

Melinna wiped her wet hands down the front of her gown. "Where is this?" she said. "What's going on?"

The red tide rose up before her, bearing the Elf who was not Maglor with it, so that he seemed to be staring down from a glassy throne. His hair was matted and blood dribbled from his mouth, staining his white teeth. The livid scars that maimed his hands had charred to black. His face was brilliant still, and terrible in its brilliance, more so than any Elf could ever be.

"_Behold,"_ He said, _"He who arises in Might."_

"Wait – what –?"

"_Here do I reign,"_ went on the maimed creature on His red throne, _"beyond the bounds of Eä or the Ainur, unseen even by Manwë, unheard even by Varda. Here is My dwelling and My domain. I am Melkor and Belegûr, Lord of all that is. Bow down, star-child, and worship me!"_

The tide roared in Melinna's ears. She was still gaping up at Him when the wave's crest broke above her head, a flood of salt and iron slamming her back into oblivion.


	6. Adventures of a Most Lurid Kind

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

**~ _adventures of a most lurid kind_ ~**

**~o~O~o~  
**

_To those to whom this story is dedicated, I owe inspiration and encouragement, as ever. MEFA 2010 Second Place in Genres: Humor: Incomplete. So many thanks to those who voted for this story!_

**~o~O~o~**

_... light bursts in dazzles and starry showers upon an Elf drowning beneath a bloody tide... east of Bree, a horde of Dwarves seethes over every inch of the countryside... in the town itself, an alewife is awoken by a rap at the door, sharp and short in the grey before dawn... up in _The Prancing Pony_'s most expensive lodging-room, an elegantly attired and very beautiful lady recalibrates a set of intricate designs scrawled over a dressing-table mirror, her hair stirring restlessly in its golden tresses..._

**~o~O~o~**

... and sitting on a broad stone threshold under a mossy hillside, Miss Gogollescent Ferny was still sulking.

Erestor's disappearance the previous evening had left Gogol and the dragonet in the custody of old Tom Bombadil, he of the blue coat and yellow boots and alarmingly bulbous hat. Gogol had been too tired to do more than unenthusiastically finish off her mushrooms (on the principle that one never knew where one's next meal was coming from) and stumble into the bed provided, a deep mattress piled with white blankets in the low stone chamber at the back of the house. Old Tom had beamed unnervingly round the door, pointed out wash-basins and ewers of hot and cold water in an unnecessarily meaningful way, and deposited the sleepy dragonet on the flagstones. The dragonet had blinked its innocent blue serpent-eyes, yawned widely and stretched each silver limb in turn; and then it had uncoiled itself in a scaly slither that somehow ended up with it curled up right in the middle of Gogol's bed. When she tried to suggest, with a couple of pointed kicks, that it should sleep by her feet if it _must_ sleep on the bed, it hissed and bared its sharp little teeth in a puff of white frost.

It was surprisingly heavy. She had regarded it with disfavour and grudgingly assumed the pretzel position common to everyone in the possession of an entitled animal. The dragonet's claws were still smugly kneading the blankets as she fell asleep.

She had awoken a mass of aches and bruises, as stiff as a corpse and about as eager to get up as one. The dragonet was nowhere to be seen. A frost-rimmed and rather tattered depression in the blankets indicated the site of its former nest, however; and when Gogol tottered out of the chamber, she had found it sitting on its haunches on the long polished table and snapping morsels of cheese from the fingertips of her colourful host.

This had not improved Gogol's mood. Nor had the discovery that breakfast involved parsley and stale bread. Now she was sitting on the doorstep staring east, or at least in the direction she believed east to be, and feeling dismally sorry for herself.

_Don't make a nuisance of yourself_, the Elf had said. She folded her arms resentfully. As if she would!

She managed almost an hour before exciting vistas of promised Elvish cities melted in the boredom of moping around Tom Bombadil's suspiciously barrow-like home.

Her host was in the flower garden with the dragonet and a bowl of cheese, apparently trying to teach it to sit up and beg. Gogol, watching, suspected sourly that the dragonet was trying to train him to dispense food at the merest suggestion of a whine, and doing so with rather more success. He had left off his coat and his hat, although his big yellow boots glowed against the grass, and a crudely twisted ring of green leaves sat on his thick brown hair. Gogol was pretty sure he wasn't watching her. She sidled into the house.

It was quiet inside and smelled faintly of soap. Patches of sunlight and shadow lay chequered over the flagstone floor. She wasn't going to make a nuisance of herself, _def_'nitely not. _Don't try stealing from Iarwain._ Well, she weren't going to do that neither! She was just going to have a look round. There wasn't any harm in that.

She slid open a heavy oak drawer and stretched up on her tiptoes to peer inside. Folded blankets met her eyes. Nothing daunted, Gogol ventured a quick rummage, which confirmed (disappointingly) that folded blankets were in fact all the drawer contained. Maybe she'd have more luck with the big chest under the window.

Atop the chest squatted old Tom's hat, its creases and tatters giving it an oddly alive air, like a sleepy black cat. It was sitting in a sunbeam and warm when she picked it up.

She tried it on. It was too big for her and slipped down over her ears. She liked it anyway.

She bent down to investigate the lock on the chest (always a good sign, locks) and was still crouched there fiddling with it when a sinister shadow fell over her. On the other side of the window loomed her host, peering in. The dragonet bobbed unsteadily on his shoulder, clawing at the air.

"Ho there," came his deep voice ominously, "what be _you_ looking for?"

Gogol squeaked and put several feet between herself and the chest. "Nuffink!" she said. "I ain't – I were just – uh..."

The hat fell over her eyes. She snatched it from her head, clutched it against her hammering heart and took to her heels.

**~o~O~o~**

Iarwain ben-Adar, also known as Tom Bombadil, watched the urchin scurrying down the chalky path into the Old Forest and shook his brown hatless head.

"She'll regret that," he remarked to the dragonet, in a language considerably older than any tongue currently to be heard in Middle-earth. "Still, it'll keep her occupied."

The dragonet smirked.

**~o~O~o~**

Melinna could never quite remember what happened next. It went something like this:

_she was drowning in scarlet, in a froth of blood and strings of ichor, swamped by the undertow from glutinous dark islands_

_– drowning and choking on iron and struggling against the mountainous weight of a monstrous ocean, lukewarm and gelatinous, matting in her hair and clotting in her clothes –_

_the sodden skirt of her gown like leaden weights round her legs_

_– through her head roars the tide and the magpie chatter of His laughter: high-pitched, cracked into madness –_

_a blinding dazzle of light bursts upon her: brighter than starlight, too silver for the sun_

– and she found herself floundering against ropes on a gleaming deck, an Elf-fish caught in an Elf's fine net, coughing up blood.

It burned in her throat. She was soaked right through, the blurred imprint of her hands slippery on slanting wood. Her hair blocked out everything else in a curtain of dripping dark braids. Blood congealed gummily in her eyelashes. She rubbed the back of her stained wrist against her face and spat out blood clots.

The ground moved, and tipped up, and the air rushed cool around her. She knotted her fingers through the ropes and clung to the net, her blackened skirts slapping at her ankles. Wind howled in the sails, the rigging creaked – but there was light all around, as brilliant as the Moon rising for the first time, as the first dawn that followed, as Valacirca viewed from Udûn's twilit ruins – and peering out between her matted braids, her eyes tearing, she saw no sailors, only wavering flame.

"Hang on there!" came a cry. "Up we go!"

And...

... the deck falling away, all the breath jolted out of her as the ropes pulled taut, spinning dizzily from the mast...

... into view rose slowly the ramparts of night.

She was open-mouthed, staring. Almighty peaks and mountainous deeps filled her eyes, all brilliance and ice, the darkness vivid. Roiling shadows prowled all around, and through the turbulence flashes of blue or yellow or burning pink could be seen, as though this was the midnight underside of a daylight sky and beyond lay breaking dawn or sunset's fire or a sunny afternoon. Upwards sailed the white ship, up through dark layers of air, away from the oceans of blood and the maimed Vala enthroned on the bloody shore. It streamed scarlet froth.

Ahead and far above, distant lightning flickered over a tracery of vast walls, of shadowy towers monstrous in their immensity. Pinpricks of light glimmered against the dark, stars set in great lanterns and suspended from the heavens.

The ship sailed onwards. Melinna was utterly without words. She sank back into her own wet skirts, a puddle of sodden cloth cushioning her against the taut rope mesh, and watched the night drifting endlessly past.

It was an age or a heartbeat before the ship crested the lightning. Below lay the uncertain line of the wall: on one side, darkness and a deep well of crimson; on the other side, the blues and brilliance of a bright new day. Slowly the ship's path levelled out and Melinna in her net swung back into line with the mast, until the hems of her blackened skirt dripping through the net brushed the deck once more. Red rivulets ran in all directions over the glowing wood. The air crackled with electric discharge; it was very cold and she found herself shivering in her wet clothes.

At the helm stood a tall figure, a mere outline against the flame of the ship, which blazed with particular intensity about his person. His back was to her.

She remembered that he had spoken in Sindarin. "Hey there!" she called. "What just –? how did I even –? _where_ –?"

The helmsman neither turned nor spoke. Melinna's eyes narrowed.

"It's young Eärendil," she said, "isn't it? We all saw the light when Ancalagon fell."

No response. She tried again, more sharply. "How's Elwing these days? Your son still misses her."

At that, he did look round, the smooth planes of his face cast into sharp relief by the glow of the stone bound to his brow. Melinna had last seen it setting light to the beauty of Dior's daughter, a point of clarity amid the Nauglamír's gaudy riot of colours, and it shook her more than she would have thought to encounter it again in Eärendil's possession, passed out of the hands of Lúthien's line. He was scattered with stardust, his hair and his broad shoulders glittering beneath the heavy dark.

His eyes glowed. "We miss them too," he said, gently, and that was all.

**~o~O~o~**

Daylight burned behind thick curtains. Lady Inez had spent all night and a substantial amount of the morning poring over her mirror, and her mood was almost as foul as her face was fair. The candles were guttering, not that Lady Inez needed candlelight particularly, when the glass cleared at last in a flash of smoking sigils.

She said aloud, "Finally!" and pushed back her eager golden hair.

At first, only a tangle of green could be seen. It sprawled across the glass in a confusion of branches and brambles, long curling willow leaves layered thickly on grass. Brown running water flickered among gnarled and ancient trees.

Lady Inez bent closer. Here came that wretched little thief now, clumping along the riverbank.

She tracked its progress for a while. There was no sign of the dragonet, which made her frown. Nor could she see the second of the two meddling Elves. The thief had acquired a piece of elderly and ridiculous headgear, and looked like nothing so much as a huge hat propelled along by a pair of battered old boots. As she watched, it yawned and sat down against a particularly monstrous grey willow.

After a moment, the thief's head nodded forwards. The hat tumbled from its head, bounced off those scrawny knees and fell into the river, where it sailed serenely away.

Woods and a willow-lined riverbank. _Friends in the area,_ the Elf-woman had said...

Lady Inez jolted upright. "Iarwain ben-Adar!" she exclaimed, and swore.

**~o~O~o~**

The rest of the voyage along the sky-wall was silent. Eärendil the Mariner, whom she had known once as a child, did not seem inclined to speak and Melinna was too shaken by all these ghosts arising from the past to force conversation. She huddled in the rope net and stared out over sculpted cloudscapes, over vistas of land unscrolling in greens and browns and miniature towns and pockets of shadow and silver pools of far-flung oceans so very far below.

On sailed the ship. It glimmered in the sun.

In the distance, presently, a white point appeared, growing into the gleaming tip of a tall spire as the ship's path slanted downwards through clear skies. Wisps of tattered clouds surrounded it. Then Melinna rubbed the blood from her eyes and saw not clouds but wheeling flocks of seabirds, and heard the echoes of their squalling cries drifting faintly on the breeze.

A single bird flew up. It was white and grey and as it coasted towards the ship, its size became apparent: it was very large and its wings cast a shadow wider than any Elven armspan. It drew in its wings and swooped down to the deck –

– and there stood a woman gowned in white, fair Dior's daughter, her hair settling in a dark feathery flutter around her slim shoulders. The wind still whispered under her grey cloak.

Elwing's movements were quick now, and birdlike. "What's this?" she said to Eärendil. "Where have you been? What have you caught? Whatever's happened?"

She came lightly over the deck, her starlit eyes curious. "Melinna!" she said; and then again, her melodic voice rising into alarm, "Whatever's happened? How can you be here? You're covered in blood!"

She had been so young when Melinna had seen her last. She had been a girl barely married, her sons mere babes, already shouldering the weight of the settlement grown up around the mouths of the Sirion. Even then, Melinna had only been able to see the child carried out of Doriath's ruin in Galadriel's arms, and her brothers, who had died there.

So long ago. She was reaching up to Melinna, her arms pale.

Melinna thrust through the rope net to grasp Elwing's hands and met only empty air. The bird-woman was only a ghost from the past after all, a winged phantom without substance. But it was Elwing who fell back in confusion, her face a mirror of Melinna's surprise.

Melinna struggled to find words. "They said you were alive," she managed. "In the War – after the War – we were told you lived, you'd come safe to Valinor – Galadriel wept – was it a lie? Are you dead after all?"

Elwing's eyes were very wide. "Not I..."

"I saw the Dark Lord toying with her in the Void," said the Mariner at the helm. "We should sail on to Mandos. However she came to be there, Lord Námo and the Valar must know."

**~o~O~o~**

Gogol was dreaming of trees, of struggling endlessly through an endless forest, a labyrinth of green curtains and grey bark. She was pushing past shoulder-high stands of moss, her coat dragging over the lacy frills of lichen. Brown water swirled over her boots.

_Little Man-thing,_ came a dry, creaking voice. _Water-filled monster... land-thief and destroyer, gnawer and biter and breaker and rootless... I have you, little Man-thing..._

Cracked old trunks rose up around Gogol in a shudder of wood. She turned on her heel and found her way barred. Wind ruffled through the boughs.

"Uh..." she said, hunting vainly for an exit.

_I shall sing you roots, Man-thing,_ whispered the voice. _I shall plant you in my valley. You will drink the Withywindle and the sweet sunlight. I shall make a sapling of you, a straight sapling rooted in rich earth._

"You talkin' to me?" said Gogol. "I ain't no tree!"

She tried to take a step back and discovered she was transfixed, her boots unmoving. A mass of white wormy threads unravelled from the much-scuffed leather, thickening at once into knotted and bulbous roots. When Gogol tried to move, her clothes cracked. The brown of her coat and her ragged trousers was stiffening into bark.

Her yelp of surprise flew up into the boughs, which smothered it. She dropped to her knees and tore desperately at the roots tangling themselves around her ankles, until shooting pains in her legs made her abandon the attempt. She knelt panting in the waterlogged grass.

"Stoppit!" she protested. "Whoever you are! Lemme go!"

_Rise up, little Man-thing, new sapling,_ came the creaking voice again, remorseless. _Send your roots deep into the earth. Spread your branches beneath the sun._

"I ain't no tree!"

Now she was being dragged up by the tug of invisible fingers in her hair, dragged upwards into straightness, her arms and her splayed hands drawn taut over her head. She could feel her body stiffening. The breath creaked in her wooden ribs.

She managed to squeeze out a last panicky cry of "Help!" before her eyes filmed over, and then her mouth with bark.

It was dark. It was so dark and she could hear the whispering woods and the dry creak of laughter –

– and water, running ceaselessly –

It was rising up around her, a cool tide sloshing where her feet should have been, soaking into her conjoined legs. She could feel wetness and rising cold. But there was a new voice now come into the whisper of the woods, a silvery song of streams and of lakes lying still beneath starlight and of the ripple of rivers falling clear from the hills. And that creaking laughter had fallen silent.

At last the song ceased. "Willow," came a woman's voice, young and merry, "old Willow, grey old Willow-man, what have you here? What new mischief is this?"

Gogol strained after sound and caught the merest hint of a dry grumble. She heard the woman's bubble of laughter clearly.

"Will you have me fetch the Master? Let the child go!"

As if in punctuation, a light blow struck Gogol's side. Then the film over her eyes cracked open and she could breathe again, and clear from her throat the mustiness of dust and soil. She stumbled and almost fell, her wooden stiffness giving way. The bark was peeling from her clothing and she was no longer bound to the ground by roots sprouting from her boots and feet.

She was knee-deep in river water between great gnarled roots, the thick woody toes of a thirsty tree straining over the grassy bank. Behind her and above her arched the shadow of the tree itself, huge and ancient, creaking under the weight of its own green crown. Slivers of sunlight glimmered through twisted branches and lay gold beneath rippling rills.

A woman stood there: slim and fair, her hair falling bright around her white shoulders like the sun in the river. Her gown was silver as a fish's mail, scaled and imbricate, and old Tom's hat perched snugly on her yellow head. The river lapped lovingly at her waist.

"There!" she said. "Now let us come away! For the Great Willow is restless and has little love for the children of Men, as you have found. And I would know who you are, and how you came to be wearing my husband's hat!"

**~o~O~o~**

"... so that's what we're going to do," finished Erestor. "Got that?"

The alewife, sitting sleepily on a long bench in her cold, shadowy kitchen, blinked once or twice and then managed a reasonably enthusiastic nod. It seemed to have been a very long morning since she had first been awoken by the Elf's knock at the door. Her initial alarm had quickly vanished, as it became apparent that the Elf had come neither for revenge nor to return her unsatisfactory niece. She had found herself scurrying around her candlelit kitchen, the shutters still discreetly shut, hunting up a breakfast for the Elf and surprising even herself with her sudden generosity. He hadn't even offered to pay for his meal.

"Give up on your wife, go back for Gogol and the, the, the _dragon_, and then head for this Imladris place," she parroted. "Uh. Where'd you say you were going to meet her, again?"

"In a empty barrow above a valley marked by two standing stones," said the Elf patiently. "It's about five miles southeast of the north-gate of the Barrow-downs and quite easy to find, especially if you're not looking for it. I told her to replace the stone over the entrance as a precaution, just in case anyone else comes along."

He was leaning against the patched-up door, which bore the splintery scars of Mili the Dwarf's forceful entrance. His face was in shadow. Kat Ferny peered uncertainly up at him.

"Oh," she said. "What did you want me to do?"

"Why, nothing," said the Elf, "now that you've provided me with this excellent breakfast. I only came back to Bree to rescue my wife. But since I've discovered she's dead already, there's no point in hanging around. You won't tell anyone anything I've told you, will you? This is very important. _No one must know_."

Under other circumstances, Kat Ferny might have been shocked by the Elf's callousness. As it was, she was far too busy assuring him that she would never _dream_ of breaking a confidence, and that she most certainly had no intention of (for example) running across Bree to _The Prancing Pony_ as fast as her legs could take her, just as soon as the Elf had left town. No indeed. What a thought!

The Elf's dark eyes glinted. "Good," he said. "Then I can leave Bree in your capable hands..."


	7. A Shade Repetitive

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

**~ _a shade repetitive_ ~**

**~o~O~o~  
**

_To those to whom this story is dedicated, I owe inspiration and encouragement, as ever._

**~o~O~o~**

"Ma'am," said Mili, "I can't help but think –"

"When I require your opinion, I shall inform you," said Lady Inez precisely, without removing her eyes from the sweating alewife. The bright intensity of her observation appeared to be causing Kat Ferny some discomfort. "Until then, be so good as to remain silent."

Mili tugged his beard sourly and shut up. "Thank you," said Lady Inez and mentally added another fortnight's worth of creatively exquisite agony onto the Dwarf's eventual sentence. "Where were we?"

"On the downs, yer ladyship," said the alewife nervously. "That's what the Elf said. He's gonna take Gogol and the dragon to this Imladris place, and they're meeting on the downs –"

"'In a empty barrow above a valley marked by two standing stones'," quoted Lady Inez, who had a very good memory. "Did he say why?"

The alewife sweated harder. "No, yer ladyship. He just was."

Mili was practically bobbing on the iron toes of his big boots. "_Ma'am_," he hissed, apparently unable to bite his tongue. "_If_ I might just –"

"No, Mili. You may not."

"But –"

"_No_."

The urchinous thief had been in the Old Forest and unaccompanied not an hour ago: this much Lady Inez knew for a fact. She might not be so fortunate as to have any reliable and competent henchpersons in her employ, but she could trust the report of her mirror and thus her own eyes – even if the mirror had failed to display the whereabouts of the dragon. Lady Inez assumed, and was not happy about this assumption, that it was in the possession of that most colourful of gentlemen, Iarwain ben-Adar, someone she was not at all keen to encounter again in person. His fashion sense was atrocious, for one thing. But perhaps he would shepherd the wretched thief to the barrow and then leave it there. That would be quite in keeping with Iarwain's general outlook on life, thought Lady Inez, who considered Iarwain both thoughtless and hopelessly jovial. The alewife's information had banished any lingering doubt from her mind that Iarwain and his flighty river-wife were the 'friends' of whom that meddling Elf (the one currently lying pink-haired and comatose in a Dwarvish wagon) had spoken the previous day.

It did not occur to Lady Inez to wonder how the second Elf had reached the conclusion that his wife was dead. She would have supposed, had the thought flickered into her mind even for a second, that the Elf had learned of his wife's capture and seen how hopeless it was to oppose her captor. Long years of political practice had instilled certain habits of thought in Lady Inez's head and even such more recent upsets as had caused her to resort to a head both elegant and golden had failed to wholly disrupt them. Besides, the Elf-woman _was_ dead in all but name. It was perfectly rational for the second Elf to cut his losses and carry the dragon off to Master Elrond Half-elven at Imladris, where Lady Inez could not hope to follow. What he might want with the wretched thief was an utter mystery, of course.

The pressure of keeping his mouth shut was turning Mili red-faced behind his beard. Lady Inez's gaze fell coldly on him.

"You may recall your compatriots from their fruitless search, Mili," she said. "This good lady will lead us across the downs to this barrow. If, that is –" for the alewife had opened her mouth in alarm "– she wishes to receive her just reward for this day's work."

"But _ma'am _–" said Mili, all anguished frustration.

"No buts," said Lady Inez. Her hair lay quiescent on her shoulders in its gleaming tresses; she stroked it thoughtfully, provoking a sound oddly reminiscent of a subvocal purr. "Oh, _but_ you will remain here to guard the wagons and my belongings. I think you and six other Dwarves will be more than sufficient for that. Don't you?"

**~o~O~o~**

The blood had all but dried when the ship sailed into the harbour at Mandos. It was starting to flake off Melinna's skin by then, although her hair hung sticky and matted against her neck and her garments were stiffening into a kind of dark starchy crispness. Fading stains traced the impression of her initial landing on the gleaming deck, like the liquid rings left on tables by damp cups.

Eärendil the Mariner began to unfasten a huge knot of rope from the foot of the mast. "Ready yourself," he said.

The net descended. Melinna found herself settling on the deck in her stiffened skirts, a white rope mesh falling gently round her. Eärendil would not look her in the face. She felt, absurdly, like some submerged statue rescued from a shipwreck and brought safely to port. She let Elwing help her to her feet and then stood there unsteadily, remembering how she had found Dior's daughter as insubstantial as mist on reaching out to her from the net.

Elwing was looking at her with bright, troubled eyes. She said, "This is Mandos. Fëar are solid here. They seem so, anyway."

Melinna said nothing. She walked into Mandos with Elwing, hand in hand.

If the Halls were real, Melinna's memories afterwards were as fluid and unstable as those of meeting Morgoth in the gory Void. She remembered Elwing and the cool touch of Elwing's hand, Elwing's grey cloak and white gown brushing the ground and whispering like ruffled feathers. There might have been fair archways and courtyards tangled up with flowering vines and murmuring flocks of other people, less seen than heard, and only half-heard at that. Melinna bit her tongue experimentally and experienced a flood of salt and iron, but perhaps that was only the aftertaste of drowning in seas of frothing blood.

The blood was gummy between her toes. Later she would remember treading stickily on white stone.

Elwing led her through the Halls to a space so vast that its boundaries were hazy, if it was even bounded at all. Melinna saw gardens rolling off into the bluing distance, and huge unfamiliar trees, and people walking blurrily in the shadows of their branches; then she looked again and saw instead amassed drapery everywhere, the tapestries wrought so finely that the slightest stir of a breeze from some open door made the images seem to move. A rush of admiration seized her, then covetousness: she wanted to meet such weavers and wring all their craft secrets out of them, if that was even possible. Galadriel, she thought, and Galadriel's daughter would die happily to see this.

There was a stone seat there. Elwing indicated it with a gesture and settled neatly on the ground nearby, tucking her pale feet under her. She was arranging and rearranging the silky folds of her billowing clothes, anxiously, like a seagull preening its disordered wings.

Nothing happened, for some time.

Presently Melinna became aware of voices murmuring somewhere just on the edge of earshot. What they were saying could not be made out, although the general tone was uneasy. She thought she saw movement flickering in the shadows of the tapestries, but there was no one there when she turned her head. Elwing sat up straight, looking suddenly alert.

After a while, Melinna realised that someone was asking a question. What did she think she was doing here, they wanted to know. This was all very irregular. Fëar had no business making their own way to Mandos, especially when they weren't even properly dead. Couldn't she just have caught one of Círdan's ships, like everyone else?

"I wasn't trying to get anywhere," said Melinna. "I was –"

She stopped. She remembered walking on bloody shores and the Dark Lord's madness and Vingilot's voyage atop the midnight ramparts of the sky. But she could not remember how she had come to be there.

"Eärendil found her in the Void," said Elwing, pleating her cloak with nervous fingers. "We knew her and her husband, you know, at Sirion. They were my father's friends..."

Yes, thank you, said someone. That was common knowledge and by the way, Dior and Nimloth sent their regards. No, Melinna couldn't see them. Or the Queen, or King Thingol. Or Daeron. Or – look, she could take it as read that this was not the time for a grand reunion, because there were more important things to talk about right now. Like whatever she had been doing in the Void. It wasn't precisely a prime tourist destination, you know. Most governments washed their hands of any citizens stupid enough to travel there.

"I can't remember," said Melinna. "I was just – there."

Murmur, murmur. Melinna got the impression that the number of people gathered just off-stage was growing. There was something oddly prosaic about this interview, for all its strangeness; she was not at all sure why, but the sensation was both calming and reassuring. It was a moment before someone suggested that she should take a look at this.

"Take a look at what?" she was about to say, when a puff of mist blew up before her. It cleared and left the air oddly glossy, like a window into somewhere else.

She looked and saw:

_a yellow-haired woman in a scaly gown leading by the hand a scrawny urchin mostly hidden by a high-crowned battered hat. They were walking up a white chalk path towards a garden bright with flowers where a plump old fellow sat crooning to a silver cat-sized creature in the sun. He glanced upwards and winked, for all as if he knew he was under observation, then bounced to his feet with a merry whistle for the approaching woman and the visibly reluctant urchin. In the grass, the cattish creature uncoiled its lithe lizardy limbs and snapped a set of sharp little teeth in a display of ostentatious indifference, twitching its feathery eyebrows smugly._

"Oh," said Melinna, staring, "wait..."

Iarwain ben-Adar and Goldberry the River-daughter she recognised at once, of course. It took a little longer to identify Miss Gogollescent Ferny and the dragonet disporting itself in Iarwain's garden on the edge of the Old Forest, whither she had dispatched them before going to her fatal meeting with Mili the Dwarf's mistress. The whole tale was starting to come back to her now. Why the urchin was wearing Iarwain's hat, though...

"... there was... a Machine?" Melinna said slowly. "And Dwarves. And a woman, Inzil– Imezil– well, some Númenórean name. Inez, she called herself. She had a dragon's egg, but it hatched. I was taking the dragonet and the urchin to Iarwain, but we got sidetracked. And I wanted to talk to her anyway. But she had a Machine..."

She remembered the Machine vividly all of a sudden: the reddish glitter of the crystals and those unpleasant hieroglyphs incised into the glass, too precisely to be a meaningless scrawl of sinister symbols, as she had seen on the werewolf isle of Tol-in-Gaurhoth and in the depths of the Dwarvish mithril-mine. She remembered the brass gears shifting as the lock clicked shut. And the slow burning glow and then a _wrench_ –

Her mouth twisted downwards. "She seemed to think it would kill me," she added. "Did it?"

No, said someone, not really. Although death was liable to be a common side-effect of separating the soul from the body and would no doubt follow in due course. If Melinna had been looking for a shortcut to Valinor, well, she couldn't have found a better one, short of actually dying. It was all very irregular, they thought, and they sounded rather cross about it. Most people had the decency not to die until their deaths had actually been woven. Besides, there was a distinctly sticky situation developing back in Middle-earth and Melinna could have been very useful there. It was really rather imperative that the dragon (and ideally a great many other dangerous trinkets) should be kept out of That Person's hands.

The thoughtful pause that followed this remark filled up with murmurings of a rather excited nature.

"Well," said Melinna, when no one seemed inclined to relay any conclusions to her, "you could always send me back there. Couldn't you?"

The murmuring ceased abruptly. They _could_, someone said severely, but it was their standard policy to discourage people from getting themselves frivolously killed, on the basis that they had better things to do with their time than to spend it resurrecting silly Elves who'd let perfectly good bodies go to waste. They weren't operating a revolving door policy around here, thank you very much.

On the other hand, said someone else, it wasn't as if she'd need a new body...

More excited whispering. Melinna had realised by now that she was dealing with a committee and managed, just, not to roll her eyes. At least she had sat on enough council meetings of one sort or another to know how they went.

"You sent Glorfindel back," she pointed out. "You even gave him a new body."

Glorfindel was a special case, said someone, rather repressively. They didn't want to encourage people to think of death as a temporary inconvenience.

"I thought I wasn't dead," said Melinna. "You just said as much."

Elwing was looking up at her with round shocked eyes. She grinned and added, "I won't tell anyone."

Someone sighed. Well, they said, perhaps they could make an exception just this once...

Melinna let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

"That would be very much appreciated," she replied, as sweetly as she could. "Though I'd be grateful if you didn't make me sail there, like Glorfindel. I think that would make me a very delayed reaction."

Glorfindel was a _special _case, someone repeated. They had thought it would be good for him. Melinna remembered Glorfindel as she had first known him and was inclined to agree.

**~o~O~o~**

There were three Dwarvish wagons standing stolidly in the sunny stableyard of _The Prancing Pony._ One contained the Machine; one contained the various artefacts and jewels recovered from the cold-wyrm's lair; and one contained everything a Dwarvish war-party might require to travel up the Greenway into the ruined North and back. An armoured Dwarf with a gleaming Dwarvish war-axe stood just as stolidly before each wagon, just in case any more of the locals might have mistakenly thought this a good moment to take to thievery. Three other Dwarves were stationed in the relevant parts of the Inn itself. In consequence the atmosphere was as taut as a laden washing line and liable to snap at any moment; such, at least, was the impression conveyed to Mili when the innkeeper crept out nervously to imply a muted desire to complain.

Mili was not in the best of moods. All the same, 'those most highly placed should walk all the more humbly', as the elders said. He nodded gravely and murmured polite platitudes through his beard and let the innkeeper leave believing that such martial measures would be dispensed with on Lady Inez's return – which, for all Mili knew, was true.

He made the rounds of the sentry-posts again. Nothing interesting had happened since the last time. He was starting to think Lady Inez had been right.

She did tend to be, of course. All the same...

He was standing in the middle of the yard looking out into the dusty street. He wasn't seeing it. In the dark of a stormy night, the Elves had drawn their swords to protect a stranger for no reason that Mili could see and they had refused to give the brat up even when Lady Inez herself had gone reclaim her property. Mili didn't know why and he couldn't think why either, except that Elves were flighty, whimsical creatures who needed no reasons for anything they might do, but he found it very hard to reconcile that earlier stubbornness (worthy of a Dwarf! thought Mili) with this sudden surrender and retreat.

He turned abruptly on his heel. The Elf-woman had been breathing when he had checked on her that morning. She might be useful as a hostage or a bargaining chip, not to mention whatever 'tests' Lady Inez had planned for her. Better make sure she still was.

They had cleared a space amid the artefacts and laid the comatose Elf-woman's long body down in a nest of cloaks and spare clothing. Her pink braids fanned out luridly around her pallid head and her breathing, which was very slight, stirred a single hair across her face. No sign of recovery, then. Mili looked steadily down on her.

He was troubled.

The Elf-woman had brought it on herself. She had meddled with other people's business and protected a thief and shown no remorse whatsoever. That she was female altered none of this, although it was particularly shocking behaviour from a member of the fairer sex. All the same, he could not quite shake his unease.

He would convince Lady Inez not to run any 'tests', he decided. He would find a respectable physician and see if anything could be done for the Elf-woman. That would be the right thing to do. Even if one was dealing with an Elf and a thief, one had to do the right thing. That was what distinguished Dwarves from Elves and Men and Orcs. Dwarves did the right thing.

Unexpectedly, the Elf-woman drew in a sharp, juddering breath and started to cough.

She did so noisily and violently, as though trying to dislodge dust in huge lungfuls from her narrow chest. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but she thrust herself upright and then doubled over spluttering, tear-tracks trickling to her chin through the fine dusty veneer that had settled on her face overnight. It flashed through Mili's mind that he should thump her helpfully on the back, or at least fetch a glass of water. She sounded hoarse.

"Ma'am?" he said. "Are you –?"

The Elf-woman screwed up her eyes open and peered up through sticky lashes. She seemed dazed. Mili took a step forwards.

"Ma'am –" he started to say, and saw her eyes shift just as the dark burst in.

**~o~O~o~**

Elsewhere, Mili's fair mistress was pleased with herself, and showed it.

It had not proven hard to find the barrow of which the second Elf had spoken, although the alewife contributed approximately as much to this endeavour as Turgon of Gondolin had done at the battle of Nirnaeth Arnoediad; that is to say, she succeeded only in delaying the inevitable. She also limped, whimpered, protested and went into mild hysterics when they passed between the standing stones and approached the ivy-clad slab that barred the barrow's entrance. Kat Ferny, unlike her niece, was well aware of the sorts of horrible things that supposedly haunted the Barrowdowns. Lady Inez ignored the woman and observed with satisfaction the scrapes and dislodged pebbles that indicated a recent occupation of the barrow. Best of all, she was almost certain that Iarwain ben-Adar was nowhere in the vicinity. It was just as she had thought: he had delivered the thief and left it there, if he had bothered to come at all.

Momentarily Lady Inez contemplated mimicking the Elf's voice to lure the thief out. Then she decided there was no point in wasting any more effort than she absolutely had to on such a wretched little beast. "Bari," she said, "behind that stone lurks a thief and a piece of my property. Retrieve them for me. Preferably – but not, in the case of the thief, necessarily – in one piece."

The Dwarf saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"

The stone was hauled aside. Into the dark ducked Bari the Dwarf.

They waited. The sounds that emerged from within the barrow were not indicative of a successful thief-taking expedition. Lady Inez's eyes narrowed.

"Bari would appear to be having trouble," she observed. "Fith, take four Dwarves and go to his aid."

By the time Fith stumbled out again, collapsing cold at her feet with his white face frosty, Lady Inez already knew the Elf had lied. She looked down upon the fallen Dwarf and was almost angry enough to say so. The hungry seething gold of her hair said it for her. If her mirror had been before her at that very moment, she would have seen hairline cracks appearing in her perfect complexion and become angrier still. She needed to conserve what forces she had, which was really the most aggravating thing. Orcs she might have thrown away without a second thought, indeed often had done in the past, but Dwarves were not so easily replaced.

She would have to fetch them back from the Barrow-wight herself. Preferably, she added darkly to herself, without doing undue damage to the despoiled Barrow-wight. Lady Inez still thought raising all those rotting royal corpses had been one of her better ideas.

The nearest Dwarf uttered a yelp and jumped back. A skeletal hand was clawing its way up Fith's leg, apparently attached only to a bony, disembodied arm. Someone had already damaged _this_ poor Barrow-wight. Lady Inez thought she could guess who. A slight sigh escaped the alewife as she fainted.

"If so much as a word concerning this passes Mili's lips," said Lady Inez, with awful precision, "and I mean a _single word_, I shall remove his beard one hair at a time. And then his skin."

She pushed back her hood and went down into the dark.

**~o~O~o~**

But Mili, when Lady Inez returned to Bree in icy fury with all the Dwarves she had led onto the Barrowdowns, but neither thief nor dragon in her hands, was in no state to utter any grimly self-satisfied 'I told you so's. From some way off they saw the smoke, a fine grey plume twisting up into the purple dusk above the town. Lady Inez halted and looked up through narrow eyes. Even at this distance, she thought she could smell the black powder that provided the principal ingredient of fireworks and other such pleasantly explosive devices. She had had several pounds of the stuff in one of the wagons.

The smell grew stronger as they approached _The Prancing Pony._ Explosions could be heard. There were townsfolk everywhere, running with full buckets or gathered talking excitedly or just gaping at the display. It was not _The Pony _itself that was on fire. Rather, the yard was ablaze with towering yellow and green flames, for all the frantic ministrations of the innkeeper and his stablehands. Lady Inez had guessed correctly: her wagons were burning.

She marched right up to the edge of the flames and stopped there only because someone gasped. Her hair was growling. "Where," she demanded, although the answer blazed before her, "is Mili?"

As though in answer to her summons, a small form stumbled out of the inferno. He was bruised and frazzled and in possession of neither beard nor bristling eyebrows; and his once shiny helmet was dull with soot. Blood and a dull, spreading contusion marred his brow. He collapsed slowly at Lady Inez's elegantly shod feet.

"Ma'am!" he said hoarsely. He clutched a blunt knife between his hands; his wrists were still fastened with rope. Acrid smoke poured off the leather and metal of his battered armour. "Gone – the Elves – they've gone – heard them talking – thought I was out cold – took the ponies – set fire to wagons – others dead – left me – gone – took the Road – straight to Imladris, beat us there..."

His voice trailed off, possibly because he saw Lady Inez's face.

"If that pair of wild Avari think they can outrun me," she said, very calmly, "they will find out they are wrong. And I will make them sorry. Gentlemen, we are going to leave Bree."

And then, when the Dwarves only stood there staring at her unravelling, angry tresses, she spun round furiously with a suddenness that startled them. A close observer might have seen her shadow took a moment to settle back into that of a cloaked woman. "_Now!_"


	8. Post Scriptum

**TALES OF OLDER DAYS**

**~ _post scriptum_ ~**

**~o~O~o~  
**

_Time for acknowledgements! _

_I am greatly indebted to the inhabitants (current and former) of the forum Of Cabbages & Kings in general, and specifically to Gogol the Urchin, Ignoble Bard the gorgeously gowned (albeit villainous) Lady Inez, Kat the red-skirted alewife and of course our tremendously sporting MilitaryHistory, who makes such an excellent (and polite!) henchperson. Gogol and Ignoble Bard beta-read the first few chapters; many thanks! I can only apologise for the absence of Aislynn the Distressed Damsel from this tale – but who knows, there may be other adventures...  
_

**~o~O~o~**

At about the same time that Lady Inez was driving her Dwarves furiously towards the moonlit Weather Hills, Iarwain ben-Adar opened his door and burst out laughing. Ponies grazed at the foot of the hill, mere shadows in the dark, and on the wide stone threshold stood a heap of bags and the two people he had been expecting. Erestor looked much the same as ever, if perhaps a little grim, but Melinna was bundled up in her husband's cloak and had pulled the hood close around her face. Only the tip of a stray pink braid betrayed her.

"It's not much of an improvement, is it?" Erestor said critically. "If you ask me, she's lucky to have any hair left at all."

"Yes, all right, very funny," said Melinna, rather shortly. She let the hood fall back to reveal her colourful head. "May we come in?"

Iarwain uttered a chuckle that made his beard quiver and his whole plump body shake mirthfully. He ushered them into the bright chamber.

An hour ago, food had been set out on the long polished table; and there the better part of it remained, despite the depredations of Iarwain's youthful guests. At the head of the table sat the River-daughter with lilies round her, flickering fair and brilliant for all her domesticity, which they all knew was only a temporary phenomenon anyway. She rose at their entrance and came over the clean flagstones to greet them, her white arms shining like river-washed stone under the gleaming lamplit waves of her yellow curls.

Before Goldberry could speak, the dragonet skittered out from under the table and launched itself at Melinna in a frantic whir of silver wings. The impact jolted her: she took a step backwards and found herself besieged by Miss Gogollescent Ferny, who had shed the overlarge coat and battered boots and was bubbling with impertinent questions pertaining to Melinna's new hairstyle. Distractingly, the dragonet dug its talons into Melinna's shoulder and purred frost happily down her neck, its tail twisting into her lurid braids. It was chirruping in a painfully high pitch. After a moment of this, syllables emerged, much to her surprise. "Melinna!" it was saying, "Melinna! Erestor! Melinna! Hello! Yes! Hello! Hello!"

"What are you?" said Melinna, taken aback. "A parrot?" She looked accusingly at Iarwain. "Have you been teaching it to speak?"

Iarwain was grinning all over his wrinkled ruddy face. "Damn you," she said, wholeheartedly, and reached out to Goldberry, taking care not to dislodge the dragonet, which was obviously in no mood to be dislodged.

"Melinna, sweet friend!" said Goldberry and embraced her. She was as cool as river-water and laughter glimmered in her shining eyes. "The dear children have been missing you..."

The dear child before Melinna bounced eagerly on its grubby besocked tiptoes and demanded loudly to know all about what had happened in Bree. Gogol seemed to have been subjected to soap and water, although this had only begun what would obviously be a lifelong battle against a natural patina of grease and dirt, and her hair spiked up in damp black ruffles. Meanwhile the dragonet nibbled Melinna's ear in its loving way and hissed when she tried to unhook it from her tunic. She could only look at them helplessly. They were very much awake and she was very tired now, and her ridiculous hair seemed still full of smoke.

Erestor nudged her, gently enough. "Let her sit down," he told the urchin, and tickled the dragonet clinging to Melinna's shoulder until it meeped and flickered its snakish tongue at him. "We'll talk over supper."

The meal had all the rejuvenating properties that could be expected of food produced by the River-daughter and Iarwain ben-Adar. Goldberry poured water from a tall pitcher and smiled in her bright, knowing way. "Why, nought but a little adventure," she said merrily, when Erestor inquired what had brought her home so soon. "For Old Man Willow does not sleep, you know, not even for the little ones."

He sighed. "Gogol," he said. "I thought I told you to behave yourself?"

The urchin's protestations were undercut by the dragonet, which curled up in Melinna's lap and snickered in a decidedly vulgar fashion. "Never mind," said Erestor, waving off Gogol's babbling. He leaned both elbows on the table and pushed his hands back into his dark hair, so that the skin pulled taut over his temples. "We were going to talk about Bree."

Melinna closed her eyes and sipped cool water until she could no longer taste blood or the acrid aftermath of firework-powder. The dragonet was kneading her thigh and breathing cold mist against her knee. She could feel the prickle of its talons.

Absently she stroked its long narrow head...

**~o~O~o~**

She had woken from Mandos, as if from a dream.

The tapestry-clad Halls and Elwing's anxious face had shimmered into the queasy, whispering dark. Melinna closed her eyes once, twice and then again, and blinked, and opened her eyes to a roof of taut canvas. All around were the cramped confines of a solid Dwarvish wagon crammed with peculiar objects and pieces of twisting metal and suspiciously unpleasant-looking implements. She had been laid out like a corpse in cloth on the wooden floor. Her body was agonisingly stiff and her throat was very dry; she was wracked at once by a coughing fit so violent she feared for her ribs.

A hairy Dwarvish face peered down on her, apparently in concern. Sunlight glowed behind him and blazed in a blurry halo off the polished metal of his armour. She recognised Mili through a blur of tears.

Then a shadow materialised and hit him over the head.

"Next time, you can be the distraction," Erestor said, while she was still blinking. "You might even make it to the meeting point then. Elbereth! What have you done to your hair?"

She finished hacking up her lungs while Erestor immobilised the unconscious Dwarf and continued to pass pointed comment on the extreme lack of common sense required to walk straight into the hands of someone like Lady Inez. This was easily ignored, since Erestor was mostly getting his own back for Melinna's remarks the last time she'd fished him out of a similarly sticky situation. She paid just enough attention to work out what had become of the urchin and the dragonet, then concentrated on trying to remember how she had come to be installed in this particular wagon with her hair this particularly revolting shade of pink. There had been the dragonet and the Dwarves and the lady and the Machine... and then the Void... and Eärendil and Elwing, and then the Halls of Mandos...

'Dangerous trinkets', someone had said. And there were a great many interesting things stashed in this wagon that might well fall under that rubric.

She cleared her throat and regretted it. "Where's the lady and her little pets?" she asked Erestor hoarsely. "Do we need to hurry?"

He pulled tight the final knot and glanced up under his arched brows. "No. I sent them to rendezvous with a wight on the Barrowdowns. She left a few behind to guard the wagons. Six, to be precise, not counting this gentleman. I thought he might be useful."

Melinna appreciated his precision and his edge. "What did you –"

"In one of the other wagons." There was blood on his tunic, but none on his face. He had knocked Mili out with the haft of his knife; the blade had been clean, but that meant only that Erestor took good care of his weapons. "It had a big wooden box with a very big lock. I thought we might take a look inside while we're here."

"Ah," said Melinna, recognising the Machine.

She had almost regained her composure, although her throat was burning. She watched Erestor glance calculatingly around the wagon. His eyebrows went up. "My," he murmured, "straight from the dragon's hoard, d'you think?"

"Looks like it. About that box –"

"Hm?"

"There's Black Script all over the inside. Some kind of complicated machinery, too – and she was very careful about opening it, so I'd put money on it being trapped. We should destroy it. Take out the gems, if we can. It – well, it was – very odd. I'll tell you later. It's why my hair's like this. I think. Well, it must be."

Erestor gave her a thoughtful look and, after a moment, nodded. "Nothing that colour can be up to any good," he observed. "All right. We'll do that. But first..."

He gestured to Lady Inez's assembled curios. "What about this lot?"

Melinna shrugged. "Take what we can, and any documents, and destroy the rest? They must have ponies to pull the wagons. We can use them."

Erestor glanced around the wagon again. "I think," he said, "I'm going to need a bigger bag."

In a chest they found bags full of uncut gems. Melinna tugged loose the drawstrings of one and thrust deep into its contents. Mostly rubies, she thought, together with a handful of other precious stones. She drew out a diamond and three huge pearls and looked at them nestled snugly in the palm of her hand. "Not valuable enough," she remarked. "Trinkets only, I suppose."

Erestor was briefly quiet. Then he said, "Remember going pearl-fishing at Balar? And the things the Dwarves of Nogrod made us? That jewellery?"

"I remember losing all but the hairpins when they sacked Menegroth."

"Let's fill our pockets. We might as well."

They set to work on the wagon's contents. By the time they had assembled such objects as could realistically be removed, and begun brutally dismembering those that could not, Mili the Dwarf was starting to stir. He made no sound, which was wise of him, but from the corner of his eye Erestor caught the flutter of the Dwarf's beard as his breathing changed. He put his finger to his lips at once. "The beast's in Kat Ferny's house," he said clearly, causing Melinna to stare at him in surprise. "The girl too. I thought it'd be safe enough, since Lady Inez took the woman off to the Barrowdowns. Is that Dwarf awake yet?"

Mili's short, sturdy body lay markedly still. "No," said Melinna, understanding, "no, he'll be under for a while yet. So we're going to pick up the children, and then –?"

"Straight off to Imladris, of course. We can take the Road. They'll never catch us – not if we take their ponies. They only have little legs."

She grinned at him. "You're right. Of course you're right. _Good_plan."

The tied-up Mili had moved not at all during this exchange, very sensibly. He continued not to move as they stepped out into the abandoned stableyard – Erestor remarked that they would be back very soon to check up on him – and no sound of any attempted escape from bondage was heard during their rummage through the next Dwarvish wagon. This contained armour, weapons (including those taken from Melinna, which she recovered with some relief), food and, in a heavy iron chest at the very back, a sulfurous black powder packed carefully into yellowing linen sacks. Erestor dipped a fingertip into the stuff, sniffed it curiously and said, "Do you know what this reminds me of?"

"It looks a lot like Mithrandir's firework-powder to me."

"Me too. Oh, me too."

They shared a grin. "That should make life easier," he added. "All this stuff should burn very well, in theory, but Dwarves always were good at fireproofing things. Let's see how explosion-proof their wagons are."

The stableyard was still empty when they slipped between shadows to the wagon that bore the Machine. There were no other horses in the stables and the Inn itself was unusually quiet; Lady Inez's party must have occupied it to the exclusion of any other guests. She had discouraged local interest in her business rather thoroughly. "I wonder how the lady's getting on with that wight?" said Erestor, glancing up at the sky. It was paling in the east as the summer sun began its slow descent. "We should have a couple of hours yet – as long as no one comes to check up on the wagons. I doubt they will. There aren't any Dwarves left in the building."

That was because Mili's defunct guards were all stashed tidily in the back of the third wagon, where the Machine would otherwise have stood alone in solitary splendour. The greenish-black wood and silver trimmings of the huge cabinet glistened ominously in the fading light. "I thought that lock was ugly the first time I saw it," said Melinna, paying no heed whatsoever to the rather sad heap of metal and broken flesh behind the Machine. "Don't you think?"

"Not in keeping with the overall aesthetic," Erestor agreed. "Much like your hair."

"Thank you."

"Not at all. So what do we do? Take an axe to it?"

"That's not very subtle," said Melinna. "On the other hand, it'll get the job done."

They left the Machine a ruin of splintered wood, shattered glass and brass gears. The lever lay like a long silver club amid the wreckage. Once the case had been cracked open, Melinna sifted through the remnants for crystals, which she pried loose with the point of a knife, but Erestor found a piece of complex machinery from the Machine's door that looked suspiciously like a firing mechanism. Nearby were darts arrayed in neat little chambers. "You were right about traps," he noted. "I think I'll take these darts, just in case."

After that, it was only a matter of secreting sacks of firework-powder at strategic points around the wagons, loading Lady Inez's artefacts onto the Dwarves' ponies and then setting fires small enough not to burst into full flame before they were safely out of town. "I think we can call it a day," said Erestor. He set a blunt knife down on the wagon floor an arm's length away from Mili, who was maintaining his excellent impression of an unconscious Dwarf. "Have we behaved like honourable Elves, do you think?"

"Why should we?" said Melinna. "Honour gets you only an early grave."

He chuckled and came away.

No one stopped them as they led the ponies out through the town to the East-gate, although it had been market-day and they attracted plenty of odd looks from the inhabitants of Bree. They emerged onto the Road itself and pushed the ponies to a smart trot, slowing only when the leftwards bent of the Road was about to take them out of sight. Erestor halted and glanced back at the town. "It'll be a while before we'll be welcome again in these parts," he remarked. "Look – smoke."

Around the corner, they divided the pony-train, since there had been more ponies than artefacts. Those that were not needed they let loose to the north of the Road; the rest they led onto the South Downs, taking care now to conceal as many traces of their passing as possible. "She'll be too angry to think straight," said Melinna, meaning Lady Inez. "Let's hope, anyway. Anyone with eyes could see where we've gone. But I think she won't notice. I think she'll just charge on till she finds us. Or rather, doesn't."

"It'll be dark anyway," said Erestor. "Let's go the long way back to the Old Forest and see if Iarwain's house is still standing. I'll bet a ruby to an iron nail that child's been up to no good."

"I wouldn't take it." She was twisting her fingers thoughtfully through her pink braids. "I wonder if this'll wash out?"

"Can't you dye it, if it doesn't?"

"I think I might have to."

She spoke glumly. He laughed a little and led the way deeper onto the Downs.

**~o~O~o~**

And now they were comfortable in Iarwain ben-Adar's house under Hill, and safe, as all who came beneath Iarwain's roof must be. Goldberry had left them and a soft rain pattered over the thatched eaves; it would dampen the moors, Iarwain said, and wash away the most obvious signs of their passing. The ponies grazed down by the Withywindle, the dragonet drowsed in Melinna's lap, the urchin was yawning in her corner and Erestor had brought a bag of the smaller objects to the table, so that he and Melinna and Iarwain could look through its contents. This was more an exercise in curiosity than anything else, since it was almost midnight and no time for serious investigation.

Across the table, Gogol was reaching for a nearby artefact. Melinna leaned over and whisked it out of the urchin's grubby paws. "Hands off," she admonished. "You don't want to get your fingers burnt. Again."

Gogol sighed and settled back into her corner, although she seemed too sleepy to manage a proper sulk. She was curled around Iarwain's tall hat, for some reason, and her lids drooped over her bright grey eyes. Melinna thought the urchin was about to fall asleep where she sat.

She turned her attention to the artefact Gogol had attempted to purloin, which was a peculiar and very heavy set of goggles wrought from ornate brass. A complex lacework of patterns lined the bulging rims and there were tiny buttons set into the solid right-hand arm of the brass frame. Nothing happened when she pushed them. The lenses were purple glass; when she held the goggles up to her eyes, the room remained unchanged, other than gaining an odd fuschia cast.

She set the goggles down on the table. "Odd," she said. "I wonder what these do?"

"Who knows?" said Erestor, not looking up from a contorted puzzle in silver. "We can look at everything again before we leave."

The urchin sat up at once. "Are we gonna go to Imladris now? Can we? I wanna see an Elven city!"

Erestor's eyebrows lifted. "No!" he said. "Imladris is the last place we want to go right now! Where do you think Lady Inez is headed?"

Gogol's lip quivered. "But I thought..."

"We're going west to see Lord Círdan at Mithlond. Círdan's the oldest Elf in Middle-earth and Mithlond is a genuine Elvish city, so you can take that look off your face. Once we've had a chat with Círdan, we might take the scenic route back to Imladris. Elrond will want to hear all about this and I wouldn't mind a trip round Lake Nenuial. We haven't been that way in a while. And yes, if you behave yourself, we may take you with us."

The urchin looked somewhat reassured. It was not until after she had been shooed away to bed, however, that Iarwain tugged his beard and said, "And your Lady Inez?"

"Oh, she'll be back," said Melinna and picked up the brass goggles again. The metal was warm on one side from the fire and its weight was comforting; she turned the artefact over thoughtfully in her hands. She was seeing Lady Inez again, all gold and glamour: the hardness of those fine eyes and the set of that deceptively dainty jaw. "Mind you," she went on, "it might be a while. We smashed her toys and stole her pet and now people know about her. She'll know that when she can't find us. People will be looking for her. But she had plans. 'Political experiments'. She went to all the trouble of stealing a dragon's egg from the dragon and she's going to be angry. I doubt we've seen the last of her."

Erestor settled back and stretched his long legs out by the hearth. "If she can find us," he said lightly. "She must be halfway to the Misty Mountains by now. We won't see her again before we reach Mithlond. After that – better people have tried. Did we ever tell you about the time we were in Gondolin, a year or so after the city was sacked, and found a cache of white wine still intact in someone's cellar –"

The silver dragonet in Melinna's lap sneezed ice everywhere. "Aññolë!"


End file.
